Single pages, in the language of the source.
Free single-page retellings of cultural classics, rendered in the visual tradition of the original — Persian miniature, Song-dynasty shan-shui ink-wash, Korean minhwa folk-painting, gold leaf and lapis. The full books are paywalled. These are open to read.
The Conference of the Birds
Thirty birds journey across seven valleys to find their true sovereign — the Simorgh. A single illuminated page from one of Persian Sufism's defining works.
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The Parrot and the Merchant
A merchant bound for India, a caged parrot, and a single message that crossed the world and came back as a death and a flight — from Rūmī's Masnavi, Daftar I.
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Zhuangzi: The Inner Chapters
Peng the great bird, the cook whose blade never dulls, the butterfly who may be dreaming the man — the seven Inner Chapters of the Daoist classic, told as a single shan-shui scroll.
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Haenim Dalnim: Sun and Moon
A widow's road, a tiger that asks ridge by ridge, two children climbing a great pine, a silver rope and a rotten one, the red root of the sorghum stalk — the canonical Korean folktale of the brother and sister who became the sun and the moon.
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Shan Hai Jing: Tales of Mountains and Seas
Pangu raising the heavens, Nuwa shaping humans from yellow clay, Kuafu chasing the sun, the daughter who became the bird Jingwei — twelve foundational myths from China's oldest geographic compendium.
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