Yahya Nazer, PhD, grew up in Iran, where he learned to read from the classic first-grade reader that generations of Iranian children remember, and where the poems of Rumi, Saadi and Hafez were part of everyday speech. Decades later, living in North America with grandchildren who speak English first, he began translating the classical Persian poets so that a reader who cannot yet read Farsi can still follow the original, line by line.

The result is more than sixty bilingual volumes — Rumi's Divan-e Shams, Saadi, Hafez, Attar, Khayyam and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh — each with the Persian couplet followed immediately by its English translation. The Persian is kept exactly as it stands; the English is plain and faithful rather than ornamental, so the poet's images arrive in his own order.

Every book is delivered as EPUB and PDF, to read on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows or Android. Yahya trained as an engineer and spent his career in industrial automation before turning to books full time. He lives with his wife Nassrin, publishes as CTRL Designer LLC, and teaches his grandchildren Farsi over video calls, one letter a week.

Questions and requests: info@farsi-poems.com