Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah

Author:   Nile Green
Publisher:   WW Norton & Co
ISBN:  

9781324002413


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   02 July 2024
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah


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Overview

Claiming to come from Afghanistan, Ikbal and Idries Shah convinced spies, poets, orientalists, diplomats, occultists, hippies, and even a prime minister that they held the keys to understanding the Muslim world. Gambling with the currency of cultural authenticity, father and son became master players of the great game of empire and its aftermath as their careers extended from colonial India and wartime Oxford to swinging London and literary New York. Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan unravels a quagmire of aliases and pseudonyms, fantastical pasts and self-aggrandizing anecdotes, high stakes and bold schemes that painted the defining portrait of Afghanistan for almost a century. From George Orwell directing Muslim propaganda to Robert Graves translating a fake manuscript of Omar Khayyam and Doris Lessing supporting jihad, Nile Green tells the fascinating tale of how the world was beguiled by the dream of an Afghan Shangri-La that never existed.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nile Green
Publisher:   WW Norton & Co
Imprint:   WW Norton & Co
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 23.90cm
Weight:   0.584kg
ISBN:  

9781324002413


ISBN 10:   1324002417
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   02 July 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

Rarely has the literary world been more successfully hoodwinked than by Omar and Idries Shah, the charismatic brothers whose personal brand of sufism caught the fancy of an eastward-looking generation back in the 1960s and flared the path to a mythical Afghanistan that became known as 'the hippie trail'. While Omar, a self-styled military general, persuaded Robert Graves that his family held the original version of Omar Khayaam's Rubaiya'at, Idries (whose many pseudonyms included a certain 'Bashir Dervish') won the enduring support of Doris Lessing. Nile Green's uncovering of the truth behind the trickery makes for spellbinding reading, as compelling as any detective story. I was hooked from the first page.--Miranda Seymour, author of Robert Graves: Life of the Edge


In this dual biography of the father and son shapeshifters Ikbal and Idries Shah, Nile Green has given us a funhouse mirror of Great Britain's alter ego as its empire unraveled. Green chronicles the Shahs' ever-multiplying monikers, mythical backstories, prolific spinning of tales of derring-do, royal lineage, and esoteric mysticism with unflappable flair. And when you think it can't get any more fantastic, Doris Lessing pops up in Peshawar, following her Sufi master Idries in shilling for the mujahideen just as the Holy War is getting underway. In an age when identities aspire to be fixed, cultural appropriation is frowned upon, and borders are locked shut, the Shahs perfected the art of trespass.--Deborah Baker, author of The Last Englishmen Rarely has the literary world been more successfully hoodwinked than by Ikbal and Idries Shah . . . I was hooked from the first page.--Miranda Seymour, author of Robert Graves: Life on the Edge This scholarly and hilarious tale of the Shahs, father and son, and their decades of fabrications, is one of a kind. Nile Green is an exquisite writer, and his book is more droll, erudite, and delightful than anything the Shah family ever came up with.--Peter Theroux, translator and author of Sandstorms This rollicking tale of the beguiling father and son duo Ikbal and Idries Shah is a thrilling exploration of the space that Islam occupied in the western imagination over the span of the twentieth century. Some of the Forrest Gump-like encounters will leave your jaw on the floor and the Catch Me If You Can intrigue of it all will keep you turning the pages. Nile Green, one of the world's foremost scholars on Islam, has written a truly extraordinary, accessible, and timely book--Shahan Mufti, author of American Caliph


"A solid, eminently readable work of scholarly detection and high-toned chicanery.-- ""Kirkus Reviews"" Green's finely wrought narrative presents father and son as, in some ways, boxed into their grift by the strictures of Britain's racist society and its Orientalist expectations; at the same time, the duo's genuine love of poetry and spiritualism is palpable. This nuanced and erudite account dives headfirst into the messy contradictions of life under British imperialism for colonial subjects.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" In this dual biography of the father and son shapeshifters Ikbal and Idries Shah, Nile Green has given us a funhouse mirror of Great Britain's alter ego as its empire unraveled. Green chronicles the Shahs' ever-multiplying monikers, mythical backstories, prolific spinning of tales of derring-do, royal lineage, and esoteric mysticism with unflappable flair. And when you think it can't get any more fantastic, Doris Lessing pops up in Peshawar, following her Sufi master Idries in shilling for the mujahideen just as the Holy War is getting underway. In an age when identities aspire to be fixed, cultural appropriation is frowned upon, and borders are locked shut, the Shahs perfected the art of trespass.--Deborah Baker, author of The Last Englishmen Rarely has the literary world been more successfully hoodwinked than by Ikbal and Idries Shah . . . I was hooked from the first page.--Miranda Seymour, author of Robert Graves: Life on the Edge This scholarly and hilarious tale of the Shahs, father and son, and their decades of fabrications, is one of a kind. Nile Green is an exquisite writer, and his book is more droll, erudite, and delightful than anything the Shah family ever came up with.--Peter Theroux, translator and author of Sandstorms This rollicking tale of the beguiling father and son duo Ikbal and Idries Shah is a thrilling exploration of the space that Islam occupied in the western imagination over the span of the twentieth century. Some of the Forrest Gump-like encounters will leave your jaw on the floor and the Catch Me If You Can intrigue of it all will keep you turning the pages. Nile Green, one of the world's foremost scholars on Islam, has written a truly extraordinary, accessible, and timely book--Shahan Mufti, author of American Caliph"


"Rarely has the literary world been more successfully hoodwinked than by Omar and Idries Shah, the charismatic brothers whose personal brand of sufism caught the fancy of an eastward-looking generation back in the 1960s and flared the path to a mythical Afghanistan that became known as 'the hippie trail'. While Omar, a self-styled military general, persuaded Robert Graves that his family held the original version of Omar Khayaam's Rubaiya'at, Idries (whose many pseudonyms included a certain 'Bashir Dervish') won the enduring support of Doris Lessing. Nile Green's uncovering of the truth behind the trickery makes for spellbinding reading, as compelling as any detective story. I was hooked from the first page.--Miranda Seymour, author of Robert Graves: Life of the Edge This scholarly and hilarious tale of the Shahs, father and son, and their decades of fabrications, is one of a kind, evoking Pale Fire, Foucault's Pendulum, and Hajji Baba of Ispahan. Green is an exquisite writer, and his book is more droll, erudite, and delightful than anything the Shah family ever came up with. How delightful? I keep rereading the six-page ""Acknowledgments"" with real pleasure.--Peter Theroux, translator and author of Sandstorms"


Author Information

Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is recognized as one of the world's leading historians of Islam. He has written nine previous books, most recently, How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

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