The Sword of Zagan

Clark Ashton Smith's Arabian Nights novel, The Black Diamonds, was thought to be the most significant of Smith's juvenile writings. But the revelation that Smith wrote another full-scale novel, The Sword of Zagan, shortly after The Black Diamonds, underscores the prodigious fecundity of Smith's teenage years.

This volume contains a sheaf of never before published material by Smith: The Sword of Zagan, another thrilling Arabian Nights adventure featuring two janissaries who experience numerous close brushes with death and engage in battles with swords and fists in quest of the affections of Fatima, the Sultan's niece; nearly a dozen short stories set in India or the Middle East; and an array of poems and fragments that reveal Smith's youthful immersions into exotic realms of wonder and fantasy.

Illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt.

Contents:

• Introduction (by S. T. Joshi)
• The Sword of Zagan
• Poems
  • The River of Life
  • The World
  • The Departed City
  • Bedouin Song
  • Zuleika: An Oriental Song
  • Benares
  • Rubaiyat of Saiyed
  • The Isle of Saturn
  • Temporality
  • Shapes in the Sunset
  • Epitaph for the Earth
  • Night
  • Reve Parisien
  • Averiogne
• Short Stories
  • The Emir's Captive
  • Fakhreddin
  • Prince Alcorez and the Magician
  • The Haunted Gong
  • The Malay Creese
  • The Shah's Messenger
  • The Bronze Image
  • The Fulfilled Prophecy
  • The Haunted Chamber
• Fragments
  • When the Earth Trembled
  • Oriental Tales: The Yogi's Ring
  • The Opal of Delhi(I)
  • The Opal of Delhi(II)
  • The Guardian of the Temple
  • The Emerald Eye
  • (Untitled)
  • (Fragment of an Essay)
• (Letter to Munsey's)
• Lost Pages from the Black Diamonds
• Clark Ashton Smith: A Memoir (by W. C. Farmer)