Stephen Mitchell

""Stephen Mitchell's gift is to breathe new life into ancient classics. In Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness, he offers us his riveting novelistic version of the Biblical tale in which Jacob's favorite son is sold into slavery and eventually becomes viceroy of Egypt. Tolstoy called it the most beautiful story in the world. What's new here is the lyrical, witty, vivid prose, informed by a wisdom that brings fresh insight to this foundational legend...

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, and although previously there have been competent scholarly translations of it, until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed translator Stephen Mitchell's lithe, muscular rendering allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece as if for the first time, to see how startlingly beautiful, intelligent, and alive it is. His insightful...

In her first two books, Byron Katie showed how suffering can be ended by questioning the stressful thoughts that create it, through a process of self-inquiry she calls The Work. Now, she encourages us to discover the freedom that lives on the other side of inquiry. Her husband, a renowned translator of the Tao Te Ching, selected provocative excerpts from that ancient text as a stimulus for Katie to talk about the most essential issues that face us...

Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon offers fresh interpretations of the most widely read and loved poet of the 20th century- translated and read by a master of poetic expressiveness. Out of the great profusion of Neruda's poetry, Stephen Mitchell has selected forty-nine poems and brought them to life for a new generation of listeners. These are poems of a happy man, deeply fulfilled in his sexuality, at home in the world, in love with...

Breathing, you invisible poem! World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire. Written only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations...

With the help of a magic tinderbox, a soldier finds a fortune and pursues a princess imprisoned in a castle.

With the help of Iron Hans, the wild man of the forest, a young prince makes his own way in the world and wins the hand of a princess.

"Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching is not only the single most important text in Chinese spirituality, it is probably the most influential spiritual text in human history. In the past, virtually all translations of this text have been produced either by sinologists having little poetic facility in English, or writers having no ability to read the original Chinese. David Hinton's fluency in ancient Chinese and his award-winning poetic ability combine both of...

A retelling of three tales from the "Arabian Nights" --"Ali Baba and the 40 thieves," "Abu Keer and Abu Seer," and "Aladdin and the magic lamp."

"In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish readers. In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey,...