The Koran in English: A Biography

Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus humanities professor emeritus of religion at Duke University and one of the preeminent scholars of Islamic studies in America, adds to Princeton’s Lives of Great Religious Books series with this comprehensive look at English translations of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book. (Lawrence chooses to use the transliteration “Koran” to signify the English version, which also allows him to functionally resolve the debate among some Muslims about whether the Qur’an can be translated from Arabic at all.) It was not until the 20th century that English translations began to proliferate, Lawrence writes, thanks to the pioneering work of South Asian Muslims who knew English well as a by-product of British imperialism on the Indian subcontinent. Lawrence helpfully identifies sectarian differences and political influences, explaining the outsize role of Saudi propagation of religiously conservative editions. He also devotes excessive attention to the creative rendering of the Qur’an done in 2015 by visual artist Sandow Birk; his fine-grained examination of Birk’s translation choices would make more sense if Birk’s text were at hand. On the whole, however, Lawrence has done pathbreaking work for English-speaking students of the Qur’an. (July)