A new translation of the Sufi mystic's verse, hailed as "authentic" and "exquisite."

Championed by icons of American pop culture such as Madonna, Donna Karan, and Deepak Chopra, Rumi has won such a following in this country that he was once proclaimed our bestselling poet. But translations that have popularized the work of this thirteenth-century Sufi mystic have also strayed from its essence.

In this fresh translation from the Persian, Farrukh Dhondy seeks to recover both the lyrical beauty and the spiritual essence of the original verse. In poems of love and devotion, rapture and suffering, loss and yearning for oneness, Dhondy has rediscovered the Islamic mystic of spiritual awakening whose quest is the key to his universal appeal. Here is at once a great poet of love, both human and divine, and the authentic voice of a moderate Islam--a voice that can resonate in today's turbulent, fundamentalist times.