The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan

A barber's son of Ispahan lies, flatters and betrays his way up through the Persia of the Shah — physician, executioner's assistant, secretary, envoy — and reports it all cheerfully. Morier had been a diplomat in Tehran and published this in 1824; Persians long believed it was written by one of their own to shame them. It is the best picaresque novel in English about a country the English barely knew. Thirty-one plates of Persian and Orientalist painting by Gérôme, Roberts and others, dating 1814 to 1900, picture the bazaars, deserts and courts that Hajji Baba moves through.