Naughty Nasruddin reading at DC LGBT Book Fair, Sat. Aug. 6th

by rjs
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Published on: August 1, 2011

The Naughty Adventures of Mullah Nasruddin and His Hairy Ass

Time
Saturday, August 6 · 6:00pm – 6:30pm

Location
The DC Center for the LGBT Community

1318 U Street NW

Created By
This event is part of the OutWrite LGBT Book Fair: www.outwritedc.org

——————

Ron Suresha will tell authentic, bawdy, queer Turkish folktales and jokes, based on work from his most recent book from GLBTQ publisher Lethe Press, The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, jests, and donkey tales of the beloved Persian folk hero, which Midwest Book Review acclaimed as “a fine pick and very highly recommended.” More at: www.MullahNasruddin.com.

Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114942898597383

Please come visit Ron at the Lethe Press table at the Outwrite Book Fair, Saturday

Review in Storytelling, Self, Society

The Mullah offers 108 salaams to Dr Bird and to SSS for their fine review!

Our Old Friend, the Mullah:

A Review of

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

SSS cover

from Storytelling, Self, Society:

An interdisciplinary journal of storytelling studies

Volume 7, Number 2, April 2011, pp. 161 – 166

*

Our Old Friend, the Mullah: A Review of The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

Sandra Bird

[S]uresha, Ron J. The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero, Maple Shade: Lethe,  2011. $18.

The subtitle of Ron Suresha’s new collection of Nasruddin Khoja fables is Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero. It is always interesting to me that so many territories beyond the famed village of Aksehir, Turkey, lay claim to this popular persona. . . .

Suresha identifies the real strength of Nasruddin’s stories in context to world literature and story performance, that is, its power to build bridges between cultures. He relates a personal reference to the mullah stories, as they were [among the] the first stories he learned from his Israeli-American mother. Throughout his life he continued to collect these anecdotes, and as a young adult he found one of Idries Shah’s collections of Nasruddin stories on the shelves in an ashram library. . . .

The intended audience for Suresha’s collection is a contemporary audience of all ages. If the illustration cover by Sgott MacKenzie is any indication of a future market for this collection, we are likely to see Suresha’s book in use for secondary educational environments as well as personal libraries. Suresha refers to this text as a “contemporary retelling,” which is appropriate to the storytelling traditions of Turkey. The point of these stories is to speak to the audience in the language and metaphors that are familiar. Suresha acknowledges that he avoided the “more lurid and pejorative sexual, scatological, ethnic, racist, sexist and violent subjects,” but he [al]ludes to the possibility of including them in a forthcoming collection. I hope Suresha carries out this plan to bring the more compromising stories to an adult audience at a later date—after all, that is part and parcel of the trickster’s trade.

Sandra Bird, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Art Education in the Department of Visual Arts at Kennesaw State University (GA).

Order the complete review in SSS from Informaworld here.

Mullah Nasruddin e-book available from OmniLit

by rjs
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Published on: June 4, 2011

Mullah Nasruddin e-book available from OmniLit

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

Stories, jests, and donkey tales of the beloved Persian folk hero

By: Ron Jackson Suresha | Other books by Ron Jackson Suresha

Published By: Lethe Press
ISBN # 9781590211755
Word Count: 75000

Available in: Adobe Acrobat

add to cart

 

Read More

About the book

Once, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his classmates with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: “Whatever you do or say, wherever you go or stay, whether it’s night or day — people will only laugh at you.” Now, eight centuries later, children, adults, and wise fools everywhere are still laughing at Nasruddin, one of the world’s most beloved folk characters. This entertaining and insightful retelling of more than 350 Mullah stories brings the famed Persian legend into the 21st Century. Storytellers, folklorists, Sufis, comedians, wisdom seekers, and everyone who loves to laugh will be enriched and enlightened by the timeless wit, inscrutable wisdom, and uncommon sense of humor of Mullah Nasruddin.

An excerpt from the book

Imagine if you can, eight centuries ago, when Mullah Nasruddin was just a child. Like all young Turks his age, Nasruddin attended the grade school for boys, the madrasa, in the village of Akşehir.

One morning, young Nasruddin ran stark naked through the town square and into the madrasa. As he raced by, his friend Hussein called out, “Nasruddin, why aren’t you dressed properly?”

“I overslept for the big test today,” said Nasruddin, trying to cover himself and jog in place to respond, “and so in my crazy rush to make it to school on time, I forgot to put on clothes.”

Get the e-book here from OmniLit / All-Romance Ebooks: http://www.omnilit.com/product-theuncommonsenseoftheimmortalmullahnasruddin-496853-293.html

 

 

“Very highly recommended” — Midwest Book Review

by rjs
Categories: Reviews
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Published on: February 12, 2011

The Mullah offers 108 salaams to MBR for their fine review!

from Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA),

Small Press Bookshelf, Volume 10, Number 2, February 2011, The humor shelf

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

Ron J. Suresha

Lethe Press

9781590211755, $18.00

A good legend is something hard to keep down. “The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin: Stories, jests, and donkey tales of the beloved Persian folk hero” is a collection of short fiction original and retold from Ron J. Suresha as he grants readers an exploration of the legend of Nasruddin, beloved throughout the Middle East and Persia for centuries. “The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin” is a fine pick and very highly recommended.

Amazon.com review, February 11, 2011

“The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin” — now in print!

by rjs
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Published on: January 1, 2011

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin — now in print!

Immortal Mullah Nasruddin, with author R. Suresha

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!

“Immortal Mullah Nasruddin” named top 10 book

by rjs
Categories: Reviews
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Published on: December 19, 2010

“Immortal Mullah Nasruddin” named top 10 book

Amos Lassen, GLBTQ book reviewer, included The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin on his list of top 10 GLBTQ books for 2010!

Schlepping through Books and Movies

Reviews by Amos Lassen

The Best GLBT Books of 2010—My List (with no thanks to Amazon.com)

It is that time of year again when we make our best lists and for me I thought it would be easy to do after already having made a list through August. Yet there are surprises on this list because like Hollywood, publishers wait until the end of the year to bring out some of their best. Reviews of the books will be available in the next few days

…8. Ron Suresha, “The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin”. I  said in my review that these are stories to “mull(ah)” over. While not really a GLBT book, Suresha is a gay author who has given us the definitive Nasruddin stories.

Those are the top ten for now … Best wishes for a Happy New Year.

http://amoslassen.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/my-10-best-list-for-2010-with-no-thanks-to-amazon-com/

Book launch & Premiere reading for Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

by rjs
Categories: Announcements
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Published on: November 26, 2010

Please join us on

Sunday, January 9, 2011, 12:00 noon

at Bean & Leaf, 13 Washington St., New London, CT, 06320

for the premiere reading of a new New London-birthed book,

“The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin,”

with author Ron J. Suresha and cover illustrator Sgott MacKenzie.

Ron will read from his humorous new collection of Turkish folktales published by Lethe Press at this premiere listening party and book launch.

Free and open to the public.

Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/9iuaW3.

More at the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin webpage for this event: http://bit.ly/e3vbCN.

“Like” the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin on Facebook

Categories: Announcements
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Published on: October 1, 2010

Welcome to MullahNasruddin.com!

Welcome to

Nasruddin and his donkey
Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey

The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

Stories, jests, and donkey tales
of the beloved Persian folk hero
 

Collected and retold by Ron J. Suresha

 

With a Preface by Ann Shapiro

Director, Connecticut Storytelling Center


Nasruddin and his donkey ride again — in this inspired new collection of his crazy wisdom stories!

Once, when the young fool Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his classmates with endless antics, jokes, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse:

“Whatever you do or say,

wherever you go or stay,

whether it’s night or day —

people will only laugh at you.”

Now, eight centuries later, people everywhere are still laughing at the immortal Mullah Nasruddin, one of the world’s most beloved folk characters.

This entertaining and insightful retelling of the Nasruddin corpus brings the beloved Persian folk hero into the 21st Century. With more than 350 of the most popular Nasruddin stories collected from dozens of sources by noted anthologist and lifelong Nasruddin devotee Ron J. Suresha, this collection gathers the most beloved and meaningful tales of Mullah Nasruddin wit and wisdom. Storytellers, folklorists, Sufis, Young Turks, comedians, spiritual seekers, and everyone who loves to laugh will be enriched and enlightened by the Mullah’s uncommon sense of humor.

The original cover watercolor of Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey was rendered by Sgott MacKenzie.

Lethe Press, January 2011    •    232 pp.    •    Includes glossary and bibliography

ISBN-10:  1-59021-175-8     •    ISBN-13:   978-1-59021-175-5    •    Price: $18.00 USD

Categories: Humor / Folklore / World Literature

Distributed in print by: ASP, Baker & Taylor, Ingram

Also available for Kindle, iBook, and all electronic-book formats

For more information, and to order:

email nasruddinbook[AT]gmail [DOT]com

or go to http://www.MullahNasruddin.com or http://www.LethePressBooks.com

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