Selections from Saadi's Gulistan

Saadi of Shiraz is one of the most important poets in the Persian literary canon and Gulistan (also Golestan), or Rose Garden, is his best known and most popular book in the west. Translated into French in 1634 by André du Ryer, Golestan was the first book from the Muslim world to "cross over" into the western imagination, and it has remained the most commonly translated of Saadi's work–and the most frequently translated into English–ever since, in large measure because so much of the book's sensibility is in keeping with what we would call a humanistic worldview, though that is ultimately a reductive way of understanding the text.

Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan (Global Scholarly Publications 2004) was the first book I published under commission from the now-defunct International Society for Iranian Culture, but it is, unfortunately, out of print. You can download a free copy of the uncorrected proof here. In return, all I ask is that you consider subscribing to my newsletter, It All Connects.