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Used for more than seven hundred years as a teaching story, The Book of the Book is one of the most compelling and astonishing texts ever to emerge from the Orient. Its central premise is the simple phrase: 'When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.'
When the book first appeared in English thirty-five years ago, its printers questioned how it could be a book, as did reviewers, scholars, and people who paid money to buy it.
The Book of the Book is now in its seventh impression, and is studied at university level, appreciated by all for its simple brilliance.
About the author
Idries Shah spent much of his life collecting and publishing Sufi classical narratives and teaching stories from oral and written sources in the Middle East and Central Asia. The tales he retold especially for children are published by Hoopoe Books in beautifully illustrated editions and have been widely commended - by Western educators and psychologists, the U.S. Library of Congress, National Public Radio and other media - for their unique ability to foster social-emotional development, thinking skills and perception in children and adults alike. Told for centuries, these stories express universal themes from the cultures that produced them, showing how much we have in common and can learn from each other. As noted by reviewers, such stories are more than just entertaining; familiarity with them provokes flexibility of thought, since each one contains levels of meaning that unfold in accordance with an individual's experience and understanding.
