Norouz Pirouz! Eid Moborak! Happy Iranian New Year 2011 – An Auspicious Day to Announce My New Book, “The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh”

I was, actually, hoping to post this yesterday, before the changing of the year, which happened some time between 6 and 7 PM, but I was very busy and didn’t get a chance to do it. So let me take this opportunity to wish all the Iranians I know, family and friends, and even those I don’t know, soleh noh moborak (Happy New Year!).

And just like the title says: It is, truly, an auspicious day officially to announce my new book of translations, The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, which has been published by Junction Press. I will be launching the book on Saturday, March 26th at Persian Arts Festival’s 5th Annual Arts Festival. The book is not yet up on the publisher’s website or Amazon, but you can order it from Small Press Distribution.

If you’d like to read a sample from the book, Ekleksographia published Zahhak: We’d Need to Hear his Mother’s Story; you can read an early version of the story of Kayumars and Hushang in the Iranian literature issue of Arte East Quarterly that I edited a few years ago; and you can read the story of Jamshid, which includes the origins of Norouz in the Norouz post I wrote last year.

We celebrated last night at my wife’s aunt’s house, which was lovely, and I actually thought I might be celebrating tonight at the United Nations. Last Friday, I actually received a personal invitation from the Iranian mission to the UN to attend an event that the woman to whom I spoke, Zahra, said would be taking place this evening. In 2009, the UN declared Norouz part of humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the event to which Zahra called to invite me, she said, would include representatives from all the countries that celebrate it. (The ones listed on the UN site are Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan, though there might be more.) The invitation never arrived, and I have been wondering all week if perhaps Zahra changed her mind and decided not to invite me, though it’s also possible, since I cannot find the event on the UN’s calendar for today, that it was canceled. I am disappointed mostly for my son, for whom it would have been a very cool experience to celebrate Norouz at the UN.

Cross posted on The Poetry in The Politics and The Politics in The Poetry.

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