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One of Idries Shah’s most-loved and seminal works, capturing in a collection of tales from the Middle East and Central Asia, the magic, wonder and power of Eastern lore.
Caravan of Dreams is a magical anthology that brings the reader closer to the spiritual essence of the Middle Eastern and Islamic wisdom traditions.
Collected by one of the world’s leading experts on Sufi thought and psychology, it distils the essence of Eastern thought in a feast of legends, sayings, poems, proverbs and anecdotes, and teaching-stories, ‘intended to lay a basis of knowledge about Sufism and its characteristic methods of thought'.
Through this work, Shah builds a picture of a single civilizational consciousness, whose rich and soul-sustaining narratives are, ‘a part of the most priceless heritage of mankind.’
‘Like the marvellous dream landscapes you entered as a child.’
THE LISTENER
‘Beguiling, with near Biblical majesty: resonates at a deep subconscious level.’
EVENING NEWS
‘[Shah’s] stories are designed to help the mind’s orientation. Their use is effective and people are able to relate to them, because they do indeed enshrine an inner Truth: they embody reality, not a fiction. Thus Sufism can operate as an evocative force via a correct use of these stories.’
INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
‘The action of the genuine Sufi teaching story is “direct and certain” upon the innermost self of the human being and this is true whether or not the said human is prepared to acknowledge that he or she has an innermost self. This attitude to literature brings us into an unfamiliar relation with our own literary heritage. The tales, anecdotes, illustrative recitals, jokes are not meant to be attacked by the intellectual apparatus…’
DORIS LESSING
‘One can read a story or two and be delighted. But the effect does not stop there. These stories adhere, return, seeming somehow to expand after reading into an area beyond outer consciousness… The experience is more than rewarding and impossible to forget.’
DOUGLAS HILL, TRIBUNE
‘Like a fabled caravan from another time, this books travels great distances, through all kinds of territory, with diverse elements… Idries Shah’s book re-stimulates the dream, by indicating real possibilities and practical alternatives to our present ways of operation; presenting not idle fantasies but signals from the tradition of known and tested activity.’
NEW SOCIETY
‘Witty, engrossing, utterly and appealingly human.’
THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
Idries Shah was born in India in 1924 into an aristocratic Afghan family. He was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition and is considered one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century.
