TEHRAN (Honaronline) – Young adult fiction writer Abbas Jahangirian has blended two Iranian legends from the Shahnameh and a Chinese myth in his new book.
The book entitled “Nian Hu and Sorcerer Scarecrow” will be published by Tuti Books, a major publisher of children’s books in Tehran, according to what he told the Persian service of Honaronline.
The writer said that there are striking similarities between the love story of Bijan and Manijeh and the legend of Zahhak, the Serpent King from Ferdowsi’s masterpiece Shahnameh and the Chinese myth “Zhinu and Niulang” (“The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl”).
“Therefore, I blended the stories to create a new saga,” he noted.
He used classic Persian literature to write the story. “Although it is alleged that using this writing style would make it hard to read, the style has its own special fascination and is understandable to young adults,” the writer asserted.
“I really like this book and believe that it is one of the best works of my oeuvre; it is the final result of a one-year intensive research effort on legends and comparative study of Persian and Chinese literature,” he added.
He noted, “Such research is expandable to other stories and we may create more works by extracting similarities between two or more stories from different cultures.”
“In this story, I illustrate how evil thought would produce catastrophic events,” said Jahangirian, whose “Monster’s Shadow” was picked by the International Board on Books for Young People for the IBBY Honor List 2020.