The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Special abridged edition

(Paperback)

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Here is a special abridged English translation of a major Indo-Persian epic- a panoramic tale of magic and passion, a classic hero's odyssey that has captivated much of the world. It is the spellbinding story of Amir Hamza, the adventurer who in the service of the Persian emperor defeats many enemies, loves many women, and converts hundreds of infidels to the True Faith before finding his way back to his first love. In Musharraf Ali Farooqi's remarkable abridged rendition, this masterwork is captured with all its colorful action and fantastic elements intact. Appreciated as the seminal Islamic epic or enjoyed as a sweeping tale as rich and inventive as Homer's epic sagas, The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a true literary treasure.

Reviews

The Iliad and Odyssey of medieval Persia, a rollicking, magic-filled heroic saga . . . in an interpretation so fluent that it is a pleasure to sit down and lose oneself in it.The New York Times Book Review

A marvelous dovetailing of fantasy, history and religion . . . filled with lyrical resonance . . . [Readers] will love losing themselves in this complex yet ancient world of the imagination.The Washington Post Book World

Its hard to think of an epic more dazzlingly splendid. . . . Farooqi has given world literature a gift.Time

It is a testament to the quality of Farooqis rendering of the text into English that he both conveys a sense of the art of the sweetlipped historians and nimble scribes of fancy, and produces a real page-turner.The Times Literary Supplement

[A] revelatory translation of a masterpiece of world literature . . . unequivocally an amazing piece of publishing history.The Buffalo News

Author Bio

Ghalib Lakhnavi was a writer and poet who worked in India in the nineteenth century. His only known work is the one-volume Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1855). Abdullah Bilgrami taught Arabic in Kanpur, India. His only known work besides his enlargement of Ghalib Lakhnavi's Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1871) is a leaflet on the game of chess written in 1882. Musharraf Ali Farooqi has translated the magical fantasy epic Hoshruba and works of the contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed. He is currently working on the Urdu Project, an online resource for the study of Urdu language and literature.