Gulistan

Composed in 1258, the Gulistan ('The Rose Garden') is the most widely read work of Persian literature and one of the most influential books of the Islamic world. Saadi of Shiraz wrote it after thirty years of wandering through the Mongol-shattered medieval world, and built it from the conversations, betrayals, and small kindnesses he witnessed along the way. Each of its eight chapters — on kings, dervishes, contentment, silence, love, weakness, education, and rules for the conduct of life — gathers short prose anecdotes interleaved with verse couplets, a form Saadi essentially invented. Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, and Tagore all read him; lines from the Gulistan are inscribed at the entrance to the United Nations. This edition uses Edward Rehatsek's 1888 translation, long the standard English version.