The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'di: Bilingual English ... (ISBN 158814058X)

A good start:
Books of this type are much needed in the world of Persian studies. Thackston's Gulistân will make a useful school text: the Persian text is clearly legible, and the glossary (despite being incomplete) will save the student's time. So, as a learning tool, this book should prove most useful. The faults of the book, however, are threefold and cannot be overlooked: 1. This edition bears all the marks of having been produced in haste and with little attention to detail. The preface is full of gross errors of style and spelling mistakes, and words are clearly missing from certain sentences. The translation usually gives a good *idea* of what the Persian says, but it is often far from literal, and in some places wholly inaccurate. There are very few footnotes, and they are not usually very informative. 2. The translation is inelegant and Dr. Thackston has made no effort to capture the feel of the Persian at all. Any 19th century translation of the Gulistân into English is head and shoulders above this one. I had high hopes for this translation, since the older versions can still be improved, but Dr. Thackston's English is dull throughout, and often downright insipid. A reader ignorant of Persian will get no impression of Sa'di whatsoever. 3. The text has no commentary. Grammatical commentaries on Persian and Arabic works would advance the study of those literatures enormously in the West, since commentaries are always more useful than translations--no matter how literal they may be. The best edition of the Gulistân that I have seen is entirely in Persian, heavily annotated (both on grammatical and historical topics) by a learned scholar. This is just the sort of thing that Dr. Thackston should have done. These observations notwithstanding, I reiterate that more books like this make the life of a student of Persian much easier, and should therefore be welcomed. Nevertheless, the field of Persian studies in the West has a very long way to go, and Dr. Thackston's latest effort is little more than a small step in the right direction.