Iran

Iranian poetry has always been of a very high standard. The Shahnama or Book of Kings of Ferdowsi is the national epic of Iran and has 60,000 lines of poetry. The book is the most important work on Persian mythology and traces from the origins of Iran to the period of the conquest by the Arabs. Marjane Satrapi is a well-known writer of comic books, such as her autobiographical comic strip Persepolis. The writer Kader Abdolah, who fled to the Netherlands, has written several books about his homeland, such as 'The house of the mosque'.