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Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Abolqasem Ferdowsi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This epic poem of Persia, written about 1000 years ago, traces the legendary line of kings from greatest antiquity to the coming of the Arabs and Islam. It's a giant book, filled with heroes, villains, warriors, kings, sorcerers, demons, holy men, and humble folk, all mixed in a story of war and invasion and intrigues, with the founding of cities, great marriages and the cementing of treaties, and the emergence of new nations. There are good kings and bad kings, great champions and shameful cowards, wise counselors and scheming backstabbers, loving wives and self-serving lovers. Some genuine figures from history can be found here, along with a rough outline of dynasties and their dealings with neighboring powers, but most of it is so fictionalized that it reads like myth. That's okay; it's cool myth. It clocks in at almost 1000 pages, even with a few sections summarized rather than translated, so it isn't the type of thing likely to be picked up by casual readers in the West, but I think anyone led to it with any sort of interest will find a lot to enjoy and learn from here.

The original is told in rhyming couplets, and I'm glad the translator didn't attempt that here. Only in a relatively few places--passages that seemed more like song in the original, ten or twenty lines at a time--did he render it in rhyming English couplets, and I felt like that worked. (It reads kinda like the Lord of the Rings, with lots of prose broken up by a song every now and again.) For the most part, the story is translated in very readable and comprehensible prose. Of course, readers like me won't have a strong grounding in the social norms of 3rd Century BCE Persia (for example), so a lot may get by me or other readers, but it feels pretty straightforward anyway. The attitude toward commoners reminds me a lot of British history, so that the way a successful general, for instance, gets snubbed by the king owing to his common origin seems ridiculous and wrong, but it tracks with a lot of cultural traditions I already know about. A lot of it was like that.

One of the best figures in the story is Rostam. As the king's greatest warrior and champion for a long time (hundreds of years, apparently) he always is respected for his prowess, his success, and his noble bloodlines, but as he is not exactly Persian, he is never quite as accepted as others in the story. After he saves the king (again) he's sent back, with thanks, to his homeland. I had a hard time understanding what was going on with him, why he was celebrated but not completely trusted, and it's because (I guess?) he's from Zabolistan, his mother from around Kabul, making him marginalized in a way that I couldn't quite sort out. At any rate, his stories are the most fun. From the back of a giant horse named Rakhsh, with arrows bouncing off him, he defeats men by the dozens, pulling them off their horses. For the king, he wins battle after battle, campaign after campaign, and the king always rewards him with more camels and elephants and servants and hunting cheetahs, pouring gemstones over his head and giving him huge banquets. They love him and celebrate him but never quite embrace him, always mistrusting him a little, maybe like Caesar with his troops coming too near Rome. Anyway, Rostam is an ancient superhero, a good guy in a rough world, and he has enough traumatic backstory and bitter life experience to suit any comic book or movie fan. (I'm sure there are lots of series about the character in Farsi or something. I haven't looked yet.)

It's easy to read this as an adventure story and enjoy it on that level, which I mostly did. I also liked reading it as a sort of window into historical belief and cultural traditions, including the poetic norms and the role of literature, and I found lots to think about there. No doubt there are many other levels of appreciation and study enjoyed by other readers, but I'm not the guy for that right now, so I'll have to be happy with my bit. But I suspect lots of people who haven't heard of this (like I hadn't until pretty recently) would find this both interesting and entertaining and might find room in their life to give it a shot.

Recommended for those souls.

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