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

secret interviews

searching book—spanning science and popular culture

and political turmoil—he focused on three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich

eager to escape a troubled past

Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah Religion_Gift_Guide secret interviewsA rollicking story of two literary fabulists who revealed the West's obsession with a fabricated, exotic East. In the highbrow literary circles of the mid twentieth century, a father and son spread seductive accounts of a mystical Middle East. Claiming to come from Afghanistan, Ikbal and Idries Shah parlayed their assumed identities into careers full of drama and celebrity, writing dozens of books that influenced the political and cultural elite.