This is grand reading, this story of the Persian poet, known to the modern world through the Rubaiyat - to his own times as a famous astronomer, promulgator of a new calendar, of the heresy that the earth moved round the sun, of new methods of calculation, favorite of the sultan Malikshah, hated by those who wished to carry favor in his place. The period is the eleventh century - the setting, Nisapur in Persia, with all its pageantry and glamorous romance. Historical characters, veiled in the mists of antiquity, play their part. But the story stands on its own feet, as excellent adventure, romance at its height, and the revelation of a period and a place of which most of us have no knowledge...
