Rumi's Secret : The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love
Author(s): Brad Gooch
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Smash Cut, Flannery, and City Poet delivers the first popular biography of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet revered by contemporary Western readers.
Ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers in America as well as around the world. He has been compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and to Saint Francis of Assisi for his spiritual wisdom. Yet his life has long remained the stuff of legend rather than intimate knowledge.
In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face to the name Rumi, vividly coloring in his time and place—a world as rife with conflict as our own. The map of Rumi’s life stretched over 2,500 miles. Gooch traces this epic journey from Central Asia, where Rumi was born in 1207, traveling with his family, displaced by Mongol terror, to settle in Konya, Turkey. Pivotal was the disruptive appearance of Shams of Tabriz, who taught him to whirl and transformed him from a respectable Muslim preacher into a poet and mystic. Their vital connection as teacher and pupil, friend and beloved, is one of the world’s greatest spiritual love stories. When Shams disappeared, Rumi coped with the pain of separation by composing joyous poems of reunion, both human and divine.
Ambitious, bold, and beautifully written, Rumi’s Secret reveals the unfolding of Rumi’s devotion to a "religion of love," remarkable in his own time and made even more relevant for the twenty-first century by this compelling account.
Review(s):
“A dazzling feat of scholarship…the book restores Rumi to the glories and hardships of his momentous age.”
“Profound, important….flows with the ease of good fiction….Rumi’s Secret offers an expanded view of the 13th – century poet.”
“Gooch’s biography brings the political and intellectual tumult of the early medieval era to life, producing vivid characters and memorable portraits of urban experience…a sensitive and passionate introduction.”
“A biography that is painstaking enough to withstand scholarly scrutiny without losing the compelling storyline.”
“Their friendship transformed Rumi’s life, and transports this biography into an exquisite, joyous realm.”
“Brad Gooch brilliantly pins both the life of the spirit and the magic of the poet to the page in this intimate, entrancing, sumptuous biography. Flutes play, goldsmiths hammer, silver bells jingle in camel ears -- and Rumi’s lush music washes over the reader. “Everyone is born once. I have been born many times,” wrote the Persian poet. Never before like this.”
“Extraordinary… Brad Gooch’s fine, searching biography, “Rumi’s Secret,” will fascinate his subject’s many admirers. We will never fully know Rumi, but thanks to Mr. Gooch, we know him better.”
“An excellent and accessible introduction to the profound and generous mystical vision of Rumi that will give Western readers a much needed insight into the true spirituality of Islam.”
“Rumi’s life in this telling is as compelling as his poetry. Rumi’s Secret is a beautiful and relevant book.”
“…a wondrous groundbreaking book….Never have we known Rumi this intimately or understood the life behind the verse so well. Brad Gooch moves elegantly between storytelling, the psychologies of relationships, and evocative criticism….His graceful prose is charged with luminous details: the sounds, the sights, the very feel of these worlds, and how they generated Rumi’s ecstatic yet practical verse. With Rumi’s Secret, Gooch has not only set another high-water mark in literary biography, he has given the fullness of Rumi to us at a moment when we need him more than ever.”
ISBN: 9780061999154