Persian Myths

The World's Greatest Myths and Legends

by Jake Jackson (Editor)

A joyful mythical ride through the intimate and powerful stories of the Persian legendary landscape.

From such texts as the Shah Nameh (the Persian Book of Kings), Masnavi-e Ma’navi, the Anvar-i Suhayli fables and works by the great poet Nizāmī, come ancient tales of a civilization that once stretched across the known world. Find here the wonderful stories of the magical bird the Simurgh, the Seven Labours of Rustem, the evil demon onager-giant Akwán Díw and the tragic romance of Laili and Majnun. Persian literature is amongst the most beautiful and inventive of all cultures, offering a joyful read of creation, love and conquest.

FLAME TREE 451. From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.

Genres: Mythology

258 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 17, 2022

About the author

SF and dark fantasy author but also a writer/creator of practical music books - Beginner's Guide to Reading Music, Guitar Chords, Piano Chords, Songwriter’s Rhyming Dictionary and How to Play Guitar. Other publications include Advanced Guitar Chords, Advanced Piano Chords, Chords for Kids, How to Play the Electric Guitar, Piano & Keyboard Chords, Scales and Modes and Play Flamenco. Also editor of Mythology books 

Released EP Jakesongs on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, LastFM, etc and on CDBaby. Lifelong passion for fantastic worlds of any kind, from movies to fiction, art to music, posters, album and paperback book covers.

Jake Jackson is the artist name for Nick Wells, Publisher of Flame Tree Press / Flame Tree Publishing.

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book’s packaging is misleading to the point of dishonesty. I picked up a paperback copy while browsing in a bookstore, checking the publication date (‘first published 2022’) and reading the table of contents, which appears to be the work of a single author. The phrasing of the introduction (on Persian literature) seemed oddly quaint, so I tried typing a random phrase into google, and quickly saw why: although this isn’t noted in the table of contents or the chapter heading, this “introduction” was published in 1895 by the then-well-known scholar Elizabeth Armstrong Reed (1842-1915). Random googling from other chapters confirms that the whole book is composed of introductions, summaries, and translations lifted from public domain works that are available for free online and that date from the late 1800s and early 1900s. None of the selections are labelled or attributed - there is a single paragraph at the bottom of the copyright page listing various authors and scholars (no details or dates) whose work has been cut and pasted into the series as a whole.

There’s nothing wrong with a publishing house creating an anthology of archaic or obsolete summaries and translations, but it ought to label them with the authors’ names and dates. For my part, I was looking for a short summary, in 21st century english and informed by current scholarship, of Persian mythology. That’s what at first glance this appears to be, but it’s not at all what it is.

[Desert Luna · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of this seemed like it was just dudes ignoring the council given to them in the hopes of avoiding conflict, getting into conflict, somehow a woman is involved, and so on. I also feel like this had way more typos than I've noticed in any other book on mythology I've read, and inconsistencies in spelling on the back and within the book (they spell it Firdawsi on the back, but it is spelled Firdusi in the Shah Nameh section). Some aspects of it did have good writing, but a lot of it was just kind of boring and repetitive, which probably doesn't have anything to do with the editors but is rather just a product of the poetry itself.
And I guess I was expecting this to be more related to Persian mythology before the influence of Abrahamic religion, but I guess that's more of a "me" problem than anything else.

[Magdaléna Kudrnáčová · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised by the low rating this book received. I enjoyed it a lot, as it introduces some of the most famous Persian poems in an understandable way and motivates the reader to explore the original versions.