Empire's Son, Empire's Orphan

"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 on 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

"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 for a general audience." - Shahan Mufti, author of American Caliph

"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. Ever alert to irony, 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