The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin — now in print!
It’s a book!
This is Ron Suresha, the author of the new book, The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, jests, and donkey tales of the beloved Persian folk hero. I just got my copies of the printed book (you can get yours here), and was reviewing it, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts about the book for folks online.
I remember one of the first Nasruddin jokes I learned, which my mother used to tell me because as a kid I was quite contrary and a real smartass.
Once, young Nasruddin’s mother asked him, “Why do you always answer a question with another question?”
Nasruddin replied, “Do I?”
While living in a number of yoga meditation communities around the USA, I learned many more Nasruddin jokes and stories, which were often used by my teachers as well as by other yoga students to inject humor and wisdom into a conversation or speech.
I remember reading the Idries Shah versions of the Nasruddin corpus in the ashram library after lunchtime, in one of the few spare moments of my day, feeling somewhat guilty that I was drawn more to reading jokes rather than some more lofty yoga scripture in Sanskrit, such as Pratybhijnahridayam or something (though I did study that treatise as well).
Years later, while working as a production editor for Shambhala Publications, I submitted a formal book proposal for a Pocket Classics version reprinted from the Shah volumes, but the publisher, Octagon Press, declined the proposal.
It was then, about 15 years ago, that I started compiling printed collections, indexing stories, and comparing text versions. Finally, about two years ago I started actually writing the stories, and now I offer them with great joy to you.
If you were to read one story or joke daily from the book, you would have more than a year’s worth of humor, wit, wisdom, folly, and fun.
I hope you find The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin enjoyable and enlightening, and invite you to look at samples from the book at the website, www.MullahNasruddin.com.
Thanks for reading!
