Farid ud-Din Attar, _The Conference of Birds, trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis

 DEEP THANKS TO Dick Davis, without whom I likely never would have read the Shahnameh nor this.

The Conference of Birds is a mystical narrative poem written in the twelfth century C.E. A gathering of birds is considering how they might contrive to see the great Simorgh, a legendary birdlike being who in the poem figures God (or divine wisdom, spiritual understanding). They pose their questions about the journey to one of their number, the hoopoe, who uses tales and parables to answer them while also sifting the inquirers a bit, determining who is really down for the rigors of the journey. 

Eventually a group sets out through seven (allegorical) valleys, each valley with its own set of tales and parables.Most of the birds fall by the wayside before the end, but eventually they do reach the Simorgh, who turns out to be....

Well! I don't want to spoil the ending for you. You can get all the details on Wikipedia, anyway. 

But my point is, The Conference of the Birds is a Persian classic whose magic would likely evaporate in translation, and evaporate all the more quickly if the translator was trying to write in English rhyming couplets--but Davis and Darbandi actually make it work. The poem reads well and the tales (most of which are traditional Persian ones, but given a Sufi dimension by Attar) emerge with glittering clarity. 

So thank you, Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi.