Arash Zeini

Auch Gedanken fallen manchmal unreif vom Baum.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

  • I have two articles in the newly published Festschrift for Dieter Weber, a volume I edited with Maria Macuch. In the first article, I investigate the collocation bun ud bar, known primarily from Zoroastrian legal texts, and show how the…

  • Deciphering the Illegible, a Festschrift in honour of Dieter Weber, has now been published, celebrating his profound and life-long contributions to the study of Middle Persian documents. Macuch, Maria & Arash Zeini (eds.). 2024. Deciphering the illegible: Festschrift in honour…

  • I am reposting this from Bibliographia Iranica. Iranian Studies, the subject matter of this bibliographic blog, is not an easily defined field. It seems to me that we often mean the study of Zoroastrianism or ancient Iran, when we post…

  • In November 2023, shortly after Jon Fosse had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I read A Shining, a 48-page story. I expected a contemplative experience, but found the repetitive language lifeless and without character. It tested my patience,…

  • Amir Mahdi Moslehi speaks to Khatt Chronicles about designing Iranian typefaces, including a font for Middle Persian, on which I had the pleasure of advising him. If you listen to the conversation, I am happy to announce that we seem…

  • Lovely to find out about ‘Stolen Fragments’ by Roberta Mazza, and that Emily Wilson now has a substack. In its first post, Wilson examines four translations of the Odyssey’s opening. Years ago, I read a Guardian article doing something similar…

  • I must mention ‘Prophet Song’ once more. Paul Lynch constructs a dark, threatening world that gradually builds to a crescendo of unbearable bleakness. Having lived as a child of revolution, war, and migration, I find his beautiful writing captures a…

  • I used to think that the politics of a certain site’s owner didn’t matter. I have changed my mind. Would you join that other man’s Truth Social? I wouldn’t. So, why stay here? Since I don’t know the answer, I…

  • I have been waiting for ‘A Dream of White Horses’ by @underagreysky. From what I have read, although fiction, the story is relevant to what is happening in the UK right now. You can pre-order the book directly from the…

  • This forthcoming series published by Brill, entitled ‘Non-Mainstream Religion in the Middle East’, is great news. It’s about time we have more studies on contemporary, lived and living religions. The peer-reviewed series Non-Mainstream Religion in the Middle East aims to…

  • ‘Parzor is delighted to announce its long awaited TISS-Parzor Online Academic Programme on Culture & Heritage Studies’. As part of this programme, you can ‘learn, gain credits, explore exciting issues of environment and sociology, craft, art, literature, theatre, cuisine as…

  • Susan Bernofsky’s (@translationista) biography of Robert Walser, ‘Clairvoyant of the Small’, is a true masterpiece. She has also translated Yoko Tawada’s Celan-based novel into English: ‘Paul Celan und der chinesische Engel’. Listen to her talk about her work.

  • Die Debatte um „Die Zukunft der Arbeit“ ist ein guter Anlass dieses wunderbare Bändchen, „Philosophie der Arbeit“, herausgegeben von Suhrkamp Verlag noch einmal ins Visier zu nehmen, vor allem die Beiträge über den Müßiggang. Es seien erwähnt „Das Recht auf…

  • I suggest German, not necessarily as a language of poetry, although it does well there too, but as a language of extraordinarily poetic prose. Yes. Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin are two general favourites, of course, and here a couple of…

  • ‘It dramatises – literally – the psychic violence and intergenerational trauma that can be wreaked upon a people’. Claire Kilroy on a fundamental truth of life and ‘Beloved’ by the brilliant Toni Morrison, via @GuardianBooks: Claire Kilroy: ‘My moral compass…