In despair at having no son to succeed him, the King of Turkey leaves his palace to live in seclusion. Soon after, however, he encounters four wandering dervishes - three princes and a rich merchant from Persia, Yemen and China - who have been guided to Turkey by a supernatural force that prophesied their meeting. The five men sit together in the dead of night, each in turn telling the tale of lost love that led him to renounce the world. As their stories within stories unfold, a magnificent world is revealed of courtly intrigue and romance, fairies and djinn, oriental gardens and lavish feasts, adventures and mishaps. A Tale of Four Dervishes (1803) is an exquisite example of Urdu fiction that provides a fascinating glimpse into the customs, beliefs and people of the time.

"...arrives like the brightest comet, a dazzling work of art full of invention, playfulness and Chaucerian tale-telling, by fakirs in a far-off cemetery. Their ornate stories are full of Mughals and caliphs, old kings and city black-outs. This heady, compelling fusion of cultures – East meeting West – complete with social satire is a remarkable debut. Easily the most remarkable work of fiction to come out of Wales in a thousand moons." – Jon Gower "Four Dervishes is a fascinating adaptation of a medieval classic spun into a satirical and magical realist novel about our times." – Tabish KhairOne monsoon night, a power cut forces a man full of disappointments on to the streets of the town. Sheltering in a cemetery he comes across four others – a grave digger, an aristocrat, an honourable criminal and a messiah – each with a past, and with a story to tell. Crimes have been committed, dark family secrets revealed, fortunes rise and fall, the varieties of love are explored, and new selves are discovered in a rich round of storytelling. And as the Disappointed Man discovers, a new story is about to begin...Four Dervishes draws on a long tradition of storytelling as it skewers issues like religious bigotry, injustice, the denial of women's rights, and class division. Lavishly inventive, verbally rich, an exotic confection, this novel is both darkly thematic and humorously playful.

A mysterious chest is buried unopened. A wondrous caravan brings fortune to a simple cobbler. An outcast princess creates a new life in the wilderness. Some of the 78 tales in this remarkable book first appeared in print over a thousand years ago; others are medieval classics. Yet each has a special relevance for us at the dawn of the 21st century. All are told with Idries Shah's distinctive wit and grace and the author's own commentary notes. These are teaching stories in the Sufi tradition. Those who probe beyond the surface will find multiple meanings to challenge assumptions and foster new ways of thinking and perceiving. Tales of the Dervishes is essential reading for anyone interested in Sufi thought, the significance and history of tales, or simply superb entertainment.

In despair at having no son to succeed him, the King of Turkey leaves his palace to live in seclusion. Soon after, however, he encounters four wandering dervishes - three princes and a rich merchant from Persia, Yemen and China - who have been guided to Turkey by a supernatural force that prophesied their meeting. The five men sit together in the dead of night, each in turn telling the tale of lost love that led him to renounce the world. As their stories within stories unfold, a magnificent world is revealed of courtly intrigue and romance, fairies and djinn, oriental gardens and lavish feasts, adventures and mishaps. A Tale of Four Dervishes (1803) is an exquisite example of Urdu fiction that provides a fascinating glimpse into the customs, beliefs and people of the time.

THE BOOK OF AMIR KHUSRAU Selected Poems & The Tale of the Four Dervishes Translation & Introduction Paul Smith Amir Khusrau (1253-1324), the 'Parrot of India' was born at Patigali near the Ganges in India. At the age of thirty-six he was poet-laureate, serving many sultans. He was not only fluent in Persian, in which he composed the majority of his 92 books, but also in Arabic, Hindi and Sanskrit. He composed ten long masnavis, five Divans of ghazals and other poems and many prose works. He was a Master musician and invented the sitar. The Perfect Master Nizam ud-din took him as his disciple and eventually he became God-realized. He rebelled against narrow spirituality and helped redefine the true Sufi way. He was a profound influence on Hafiz and is seen as the link between Sadi and Hafiz in updating the form and content of the ghazal and eroticising it. This is the largest selection of his poems in English. Introduction is on his Life & Times & Poetry and the Forms in which he wrote and on Sufism & Poetry. The correct rhyme-structure has been kept and the meaning of these beautiful, enlightened poems. Appendix: Translation of his The Tale of the Four Dervishes Large Format Paperback 7" x 10" 439 pages COMMENTS ON PAUL SMITH'S TRANSLATION OF HAFIZ'S 'DIVAN'. "It is not a joke... the English version of ALL the ghazals of Hafiz is a great feat and of paramount importance. I am astonished. If he comes to Iran I will kiss the fingertips that wrote such a masterpiece." Dr. Mir Mohammad Taghavi (Dr. of Literature) Tehran. "Superb translations. 99% Hafiz 1% Paul Smith." Ali Akbar Shapurzman, translator of works into Persian and knower of Hafiz's Divan off by heart. "Smith has probably put together the greatest collection of literary facts and history concerning Hafiz." Daniel Ladinsky (Penguin Books author). "I was very impressed with the beauty of these books." Dr. R.K. Barz. Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. Paul Smith is a poet, author and translator of many books of Sufi poets of the Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Pashtu and other languages including Hafiz, Sadi, Nizami, Rumi, 'Attar, Sana'i, Jahan Khatun, Obeyd Zakani, Mu'in, Amir Khusrau, Nesimi, Kabir, Anvari, Ansari, Jami, Omar Khayyam, Rudaki, Yunus Emre, Shah Latif, Bulleh Shah, Iqbal, Ghalib, Dara Shikoh, Lalla Ded, Makhfi and many others, and his own poetry, fiction, plays, biographies, children's books, and a dozen screenplays. www.newhumanitybooks.com

From the author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced, a stirring and explosive novel about an American Muslim family in Wisconsin struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world. Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes. American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life.

By one of Britain's most gifted scientists: a magnificently daring and compulsively readable account of life on Earth (from the "big bang" to the advent of man), based entirely on the most original of all sources--the evidence of fossils. With excitement and driving intelligence, Richard Fortey guides us from the barren globe spinning in space, through the very earliest signs of life in the sulphurous hot springs and volcanic vents of the young planet, the appearance of cells, the slow creation of an atmosphere and the evolution of myriad forms of plants and animals that could then be sustained, including the magnificent era of the dinosaurs, and on to the last moment before the debut of Homo sapiens. Ranging across multiple scientific disciplines, explicating in wonderfully clear and refreshing prose their findings and arguments--about the origins of life, the causes of species extinctions and the first appearance of man--Fortey weaves this history out of the most delicate traceries left in rock, stone and earth. He also explains how, on each aspect of nature and life, scientists have reached the understanding we have today, who made the key discoveries, who their opponents were and why certain ideas won. Brimful of wit, fascinating personal experience and high scholarship, this book may well be our best introduction yet to the complex history of life on Earth. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection With 32 pages of photographs

In this lyrical, exuberant tale, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club Pick), incarnates Rumi's timeless message of love The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz—that together explore the enduring power of Rumi's work. Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mir­rors her own and that Zahara—like Shams—has come to set her free.