Stephen Mitchell

When clearing out his mother's flat Stephen discovers a tin of old photographs under her bed. Each image evokes a memory of childhood and we get to meet the people who inhabit those memories wayward friends and sensible friends, strict teachers and hopeless teachers, ugly girls and gorgeous girls, Aunts who are not Aunts and Uncles who are not Uncles and a grandfather who revels in the art of mischief. In this funny and sometimes moving novella Stephen...

"Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha statue, blows smoke in its face, and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?" This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn is fond of posing to his American students who attend his Zen centers. Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny living record of the dialogue between Korean Zen Master Seung...

The theme of The Book of Job is nothing less than human suffering and the transcendence of it: it pulses with moral energy, outrage, and spiritual insight. Now, The Book of Job has been rendered into English by the eminent translator and scholar Stephen Mitchell, whose versions of Rilke, Israeli poetry, and the Tao Te Ching have been widely praised. This is the first time ever that the Hebrew verse of Job has been translated into verse in any language,...

In this highly acclaimed translation, Stephen Mitchell conveys in English the simplicity, dignity and powerful earthiness of the original Hebrew. More than just interpreting it, he also separates stories that were combined by scribes centuries after they were written, explaining their sources and omitting all verses that are recognized as scribal additions. Like removing coat after coat of lacquer from a once-vibrant masterpiece, this allows readers...

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 of...

The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world's literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition, one that has been translated into more than two hundred English editions. Stephen Mitchell - the acclaimed translator of Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the Tao Te Ching - has produced a definitive version of The Bhagavad Gita for our time. Mitchell's translation sings with the clarity, the vigor,...

In this treasury of passionate and humorous encounters with animals, Stephen Mitchell has collected animal poems from many ages and cultures. Included here are excerpts from ancient masterpieces like The Hymn to the Sun by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, The Book of Job, as well as haikus by Basho and Issa. Additional works included here are poems by Christopher Smart, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Gerald Manley Hopkins. With some of the...

This brilliant new treatment of the oldest epic in the world is a literary event. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell breathes life into a 3,700-year-old classic, delivering a lithe and muscular rendering that shows how startlingly alive Gilgamesh is, how filled with intelligence and beauty. It is the story of literature's first hero, an historical king of Uruk in Babylonia, and his journey of self-discovery. Along the way,...

"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,...

A fascinating look at the key components of romantic love-sex, idealization, aggression, self-pity, guilt, and commitment-argues that romance does not diminish in a long-term relationship, describes the barriers to lasting love, and offers helpful advice on how to promote an enduring love by eliminating self-destructive efforts to protect oneself from its risks.