FAVOLE PERSIANE

FORTY-THREE LESSONS OF FREEDOM FROM THE PAST OF A PEOPLE WHO TODAY ARE VICTIMS OF A BLOODY DICTATORSHIP. With illustrations by Marjane Satrapi. Over seven hundred years ago, the great Persian poet Jalal al-Din Rumi composed the Masnavi, a ponderous poem of about 25,000 verses divided into six books. In this monumental work, Rumi explored every aspect of the human soul and pointed the way to wisdom. Today, two contemporary scholars, Lila Ibrahim-Lamrous and Bahman Namvar Motlagh, have extracted forty-four fables, illustrated by Marjane Satrapi, who with Persepolis showed the world the bloody madness of the Iranian dictatorship. In these small stories of parrots, mice, bears, and lions, all the wisdom and irreverence of a people who have long been suffocated by a criminal regime emerges.