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Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter

Teaching Stories and Fables
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( 194 ratings, 25 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Rumi's Little Book of Love and Laughter offers over 40 fables and teaching stories revealing the vivid, human side of Rumi's spiritual vision. These tales explore themes of love, laughter, death, betrayal, and the soul with an exuberant and earthy style reminiscent ofHieronymus Bosch's paintings or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Stories feature ribald, tricky, and ultimately transformed characters, capturing the vitality and complexity of human experience.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2499
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This collection is ideal for readers interested in spirituality, poetry, and timeless wisdom presented with humour and vitality. Fans of Rumi's poetry, as well as those who appreciate teaching stories with a bold, human touch will find this book engaging.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Rowdy, ecstatic and sometimes stern, these teaching stories and fables reveal new and very human properties in Rumi's vision. Included here are the notorious "Latin parts" that Reynold Nicholson felt were too unseemly to appear in English in his 1920s translation. For Rumi, anything that human beings do — however compulsive — affords a glimpse into the inner life.

Here are more than 40 fables or teaching stories that deal with love, laughter, death, betrayal, and the soul. The stories are exuberant, earthy, and bursting with vitality — much like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The characters are guilty, lecherous, tricky, ribald, and finally possessors of opened souls.

Barks writes: "These teaching stories are a kind of scrimshaw — intricately carved, busy figures, confused and threatening and weirdly funny."

This is an entertaining collection from one of the greatest spiritual poets of all time, rendered by his most popular translator.

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. — Rumi

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781571747617

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 09 September 2016

Country: United States

Imprint: Hampton Roads Publishing Co

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 178.0mm

Weight: 209g

Pages: 240

About the Author

Coleman Barks is an American poet, a former lecturer at the University of Georgia and a renowned interpreter of Rumi and other mystic poets. He makes frequent international appearances and is well-known throughout the Middle East. His work has contributed to the creation of a strong Rumi following in the English-speaking world and the dissemination of Sufi ideas across many cultural boundaries.

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