TEHRAN – “Tables of the Law” and “Joseph and His Brothers” by German writer Thomas Mann have been published in Persian in a single book.

Ofoq is the publisher of the book translated by Mahmud Haddadi.

First published in 1944, “The Tables of the Law” recounts the early life of Moses, his preparations for leading his people out of Egypt, the Exodus itself and the incidents at the oasis of Kadesh, as well as the engraving of the stone tablets of the law on Mount Sinai.

In Thomas Mann’s ironic and incisive style, this story, the most dramatic and significant in the Hebrew Bible, takes on a new, and at times witty, life and meaning. 

He wrote himself that he wanted to bring this distant, legendary figure closer to the modern reader in an intimate, natural and convincing manner.

Like Joseph and His Brothers, it represents Mann’s art at its best. His tale of the ethical founding and molding of people sharply rebukes the Nazis for their intended destruction of the moral code set down in the Ten Commandments, lending his famous irony and authorial license to this account of the shaping of the Jewish people.

In “Joseph and His Brothers”, Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. 

He conceived of the four parts, The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider, as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. 

Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight and epic grandeur.

Photo: A combination photo shows Thomas Mann and the Persian edition of his stories “Tablets of the Law” and “Joseph and His Brothers”.

MMS/YAW