Khaja Shamsuddin Mohammad Hafez (1327-1390 C.E.) was born in Shiraz, a city in Southwest Iran where he lived his entire life. The elegance, beauty, and delicacy of his poetry have made him the most beloved poet of the Persian-speaking world. Hafez composed the bulk of his poetry in the form of ghazal, a lyrical poem similar to an English sonnet whose length ranges from seven to thirteen couplets. Ghazals often deal with love and beauty and may occasionally be interspersed with philosophical, ethical, didactic, or critical lines about life and the universe. Reza Saberi has produced a new English translation of the complete Divan of Hafez, using Dr. Parviz N. Khanlari's Edition. The text of The Divan of Hafez is an authentic translation of all of the poems of Hafez complete with their Persian originals.

Reza Saberi translates over 1,500 quatrains from more than one hundred Iranian poets since the tenth century. In addition to the quatrains of better known poets such as Hafez, Sa'di, Rumi and Khayyam many of the poets and their poems have been translated into English for the first time. A rub is a poem in four lines, which is complete in itself and expresses a single feeling or thought in a very concise and elegant language. Their subjects include divine love, the ecstasy of love, mystical knowledge, and the nature of life and existence. The tradition of sufism, the Irano-Islamic mysticism that advocates the oneness and wholeness of all things and the unity of existence (vahdate vjud), is conveyed in the majority of the poems. Reza Saberi has tried to be as faithful to the original text as is possible in English. His translation can be of special interest for speakers of Persian who try to communicate the sense of beauty of their poetry in the English language. The bilingual format is also very useful for students of Persian language and literature.