Among the great works of world literature, perhaps one of the least familiar to English readers is Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, the national epic of Persia. This prodigious narrative, composed by the poet Ferdowsi between the years 980 and 1010, tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century.

Shahnameh belongs in the company of such literary masterpieces as Dante's Divine Comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, and the epics of Homer - classics whose reach and range bring whole cultures into view. In its pages are unforgettable moments of national triumph and failure, human courage and cruelty, blissful love and bitter grief.

In tracing the roots of Iran, Shahnameh initially draws on the depths of legend and then carries its story into historical times, when ancient Persia was swept into an expanding Islamic empire. Now Dick Davis, the greatest modern translator of Persian poetry, has revisited that poem, turning the finest stories of Ferdowsi's original into an elegant combination of prose and verse.

For the first time in English, in the most complete form possible, readers can experience Shahnameh in the same way that Iranian storytellers have lovingly conveyed it in Persian for the past thousand years.

The Persian poet Hafez (1320-1389) is best known as a Sufi mystic who incorporated elements of Sufism into his verses. The state of God-Realisation is symbolised through union with a Beloved, and drinking the wine of spiritual love.

This compact version of the Divan of Hafez is a facsimile illuminated manuscript, complete with beautiful Persian calligraphy and miniature illustrations. There are 43 ghazals, translated into English by classical scholar Gertrude Bell. It is a truly beautiful introduction not only to the works of this beloved Sufi mystic, but also to the artistry of Mahmoud Farshchian. It is like getting two books in one: poetry and art.

Poetry is the greatest literary form of ancient Persia and modern Iran, and the fourteenth-century poet known as Hafez is its preeminent master. Little is known about the poet's life, and there are more legends than facts relating to the particulars of his existence. This mythic quality is entirely appropriate for the man known as "The Interpreter of Mysteries" and "The Tongue of the Hidden", whose verse is regarded as oracular by those seeking guidance and attempting to realize wishes.

A mere fraction of what is presumed to have been an extensive body of work survives. This collection is derived from Hafez's Divan (collected poems), a classic of Sufism. The short poems, called ghazals, are sonnet-like arrangements of varied numbers of couplets. In the tradition of Persian poetry and Sufi philosophy, each poem corresponds to two interpretations, sensual and mystic.

This outstanding translation of Hafez's poetry was created by historian and Arabic scholar Gertrude Bell, who observed, "These are the utterances of a great poet, the imaginative interpreter of the heart of man; they are not of one age, or of another, but for all time."