The Prince and The Handmaiden from The Sufis

From the Idries Shah Current and Traditional Ideas

The Sufis by Idries Shah offers the closest thing a written work can to an experience of Sufism — neither emotionalist nor academic.  When it came out in 1964 it was incredibly influential, attracting admirers such as Robert Graves (who wrote the introduction), Ted Hughes and Doris Lessing. It’s the most important modern book written on Sufism and a must-read for any serious student of Sufi thought.

The material contained within The Sufis has been applied by psychologists and physicists, school teachers, lawyers, social workers, and by ordinary members of the public.

‘Perhaps the best introduction to the body of Shah’s work, the most comprehensively informative.’ New York Times