Fatemeh Shams was born in Mashhad in northeastern Iran in 1983. By the age of sixteen, she had won the silver medal in the National Olympiad of Literature. She received her undergraduate degree from Tehran University and her PhD from Oxford. In 2013 she won the prize for the best young Persian poet in the Jaleh Esfahani poetry festival in London. She currently lives in England.

Dick Davis is an accomplished poet and scholar; he is also the finest translator of Persian poetry. With Layli and Majnun, he brings Nezami’s classic to life for the first time in brilliant and moving English verse that captures all the extraordinary power and ingenuity of the original poem. Meanwhile, an introduction and copious explanatory notes shed a fascinating light on Nezami’s life and work, and the astonishing virtuosity of his poetic style, that help set the stage for the reader’s enjoyment of this tour de force of Persian literature.