Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies Michael Barry has been awarded the World Book Award  of the Islamic Republic of Iran for his book entitled Le Cantique des Oiseaux d’‘Attâr illustré par la peinture en Islam d’Orient (Paris: Éditions Diane de Selliers, 2012). The World Book Award honors the best new works in the field of Iranian Studies. Containing a French translation of Attar’s Manṭiq al-Ṭayr by Leili Anvar, Cantique des Oiseaux presents 207 Persian, Turkish, Afghani, and Indo-Pakistani miniatures from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries with expert commentary on the paintings by Barry. The book has previously won the 2013 Le Prix du Cercle Montherlant for Literature on Art in the French language by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. An English version, The Canticle of the Birds: Illustrated Through Persian and Eastern Islamic Art, with a translation into English of Manṭiq al-Ṭayr by Dick Davis, is scheduled to appear in early 2014. This is the second time Barry has won this award. His French-language verse translation and extensive study of the symbolism of the 12th-century Persian poet Nizâmî’s Haft Paykar or “Seven Icons”, Le Pavillon des sept princesses, was awarded the Prize for Book of the Year on Persian Civilization in 2002.

A lovely video (in French) about the book may be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5ncDwFwleU.