The Secret of Laughter: Magical Tales from Classical Persia

(Paperback)

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Description

This magical collection of stories, gathered from the rich treasury of Persian folk and fairytales, tells of love and longing, fate and human ingenuity, loss and grace. Although sources of these tales have been lost over the ages, their memory runs through the collective psyche of the Iranian people. Handed down through generations, told by professional storytellers in bazaars and gatherings, these tales have been made popular the world over by great poets such as Rumi and Firdowsi. At the same time, beneath these charmed narratives, they reflect deep cultural and psychological insights into the attitudes, values and structures which constitute Iranian society. In her own unique voice - with style, charm and humour - Shusha Guppy narrates these timeless fables of princes and princesses; dervishes and miracle-working saints; jinns and giants; flame-breathing dragons and winged horses; sorcerers and magicians.

Reviews

Somehow she puts you in touch with the ancient experience of a whole person...the real river of souls and physical ritual history which is the genius of Persia. -- Ted Hughes
She writes with a fluency and charm that seem to come as naturally as breathing. -- Patrick Leigh Fermor
Charming and digressive, they are full of sorcery, love affairs and tyrants who are thwarted by clever, resourceful women. -- Financial Times Magazine
A delightful read...The Secret of Laughter allows us to witness the ability of literature to preserve a culture... * Times Higher Education Supplement *
She makes you live moments of real enchantment...freshness, delicacy, intensity. -- Nathalie Sarraute
A more charming, alluring and unique book will not be published this - or any other - year...The Secret of Laughter is regrettably brief but repeatedly memorable. -- Douglas Murray, author of 'Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas'
Well remembered and beautifully written...vivid descriptions...wonderful moral tales...an exotic book. * Loose Ends, BBC Radio 4 *
Here is Shusha Guppy doing what she does so well - recreating, and so preserving, for English-reading audiences, the bewitching worlds of Persian folklore and fairy tales which continue to engage young and old alike. * Eastern Art Report *

Author Bio

Shusha Guppy was born and brought up in Iran. She went to Paris when she was 17 to study at the Sorbonne, and moved to London in the early 1960s. London editor of The Paris Review, she contributed to publications on both sides of the Atlantic. A well-known writer and singer/songwriter, she was also the author of the prize winning The Blindfold Horse and A Girl in Paris (both Tauris Parke Paperbacks). She died in 2008, aged 72.