Professor Anna M. Gade (Languages and Cultures of Asia) recently published The Qur'an: An Introduction with Oneworld Publications.
From the publisher's website:
Explaining the language and the major themes of the Qur'an, its unique literary structure, and its alleged "inimitability", Gade highlights how it seamlessly weaves together law, narrative, description, and parable.
With extensive extracts, illustrations, and detailed insights into its textual history, The Qur'an: An Introduction helps those coming to the translated text for the first time and explains the unique issues that Qur'anic translation raises.
Exploring how a huge variety of topics are dealt with in the Qur'an, from gender and conflict to mysticism and even ecological crisis, both students and general readers will find this an invaluable primer.
Gade specializes in traditions of global Islam, the Qur'an, trends in religious revitalization in Muslim Southeast Asia as well as Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and theory and method in the academic study of religion and anthropological approaches to religion.