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Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is recognized as one of the world's leading historians of Islam. He has written nine previous books, most recently, How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
"A solid, eminently readable work of scholarly detection and high-toned chicanery.-- ""Kirkus Reviews"" Green's finely wrought narrative presents father and son as, in some ways, boxed into their grift by the strictures of Britain's racist society and its Orientalist expectations; at the same time, the duo's genuine love of poetry and spiritualism is palpable. This nuanced and erudite account dives headfirst into the messy contradictions of life under British imperialism for colonial subjects.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" 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. 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 Rarely has the literary world been more successfully hoodwinked than by Ikbal and Idries Shah . . . 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. Nile Green is an exquisite writer, and his book is more droll, erudite, and delightful than anything the Shah family ever came up with.--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--Shahan Mufti, author of American Caliph"
