The Book of Z

In The Book of Z, Rahat Kurd turns to classical Persian and Urdu poets whose work responds passionately to mystical possibilities – above all, longing for divine union – found within scriptural language. Zulaykha, the mytho-poetic figure known as “the wife of the Aziz” in the Qur’an or “the wife of Potiphar” in the Bible, was championed by early Sufi poets, most likely those writing in Persian, who felt moved to give her a name. For a thousand years, Zulaykha has been as much celebrated as a lover in Muslim folk tradition and Persian and Mughal miniature painting, as the wife of Potiphar was cast as temptress in misogynistic cautionary tales and canonical Western art. Kurd writes in the vividly imagined voice of a Zulaykha who considers her Abrahamic lineage from its estranged and fragmented reality, asking what consolation human desire and divine longing might offer our shared present tense.