Celebrating Recent Work by Hamid Dabashi

In this book, Hamid Dabashi offers a radical reconsideration of the parable in Persian literature, arguing that parabolic thinking is a mode of philosophical reflection. Dabashi eschews the conventional focus on the supposed moral or political allusions in these parables—the “moral of the story”—to allow the radical surfaces of their poetic disposition to reveal themselves. He turns his attention instead to what Kafka called “the fabulous yonder” as the defining moment of the parable. Focusing on a sustained course of Persian parables through the ages, Dabashi shows that the genre is not limited to masterpieces by such iconic poets as Sa’di, Rumi, Attar, and Sana’i. In fact, he argues, parabolic thinking has a much wider domain in Persian literature and philosophy and plays a distinct role within Persian and Islamic traditions.