Here are 49 books that A Saint in the City fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a scholar who has spent most of his working life looking at the history of North Africa. This passion was formerly directed toward looking at the conditions that Europeans imposed on local populations, but in recent times, I have moved solely to consider forgotten cultures made by indigenous Muslim and Jewish populations. Making this move has been the best, riskiest, and most rewarding choice I’ve ever made in my career, and I am now a cheerleader for the incredible forms of art made by ordinary people in these societies.
This is a book that changed my sense as to what we could know of the past. Its unlocking of the “secret” or lost religious codes of Persian miniature painting has proved utterly game-changing in the field of Islamic art.
I love it for the incredible beauty of its argumentation, as well as the gorgeousness of its close readings of medieval illuminated painting.
In terms of elucidating inner meaning and symbolism, the study of medieval Islamic art has lagged almost a full century behind that of medieval Western art. This groundbreaking work suggests how it might at last prove possible to crack the allegorical code of medieval Islamic painting during its Golden Age between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Barry focuses his study around the work of Bihzad, a painter who flourished in the late fifteenth century in the kingdom of Herat, now in Afghanistan. Bihzad became the undisputed master of the "Persian miniature" and an almost mythical personality throughout Asian Islam. By…
I’m a scholar who has spent most of his working life looking at the history of North Africa. This passion was formerly directed toward looking at the conditions that Europeans imposed on local populations, but in recent times, I have moved solely to consider forgotten cultures made by indigenous Muslim and Jewish populations. Making this move has been the best, riskiest, and most rewarding choice I’ve ever made in my career, and I am now a cheerleader for the incredible forms of art made by ordinary people in these societies.
I love the open-mindedness of this book and the way in which it can open your mind as a reader.
Can pictures think for themselves? How do pictures communicate with each other and with their audiences? These are the kinds of questions that this pathbreaking work opens up to its audience.
It also changed my sense as to how photography and painting/prints relate to each other, as well as providing a strong defence of the idea that deep cultural critique can be founded upon the study of quite ordinary objects and texts.
'Photos of the Gods' is a comprehensive history of India's popular visual culture. Combining anthropology, political and cultural history, and the study of aesthetic systems, and using many intriguing and unfamiliar images, the book shows that the current predicament of India cannot be understood without taking into account this complex, fascinating, and until now virtually unseen, visual history.
I’m a scholar who has spent most of his working life looking at the history of North Africa. This passion was formerly directed toward looking at the conditions that Europeans imposed on local populations, but in recent times, I have moved solely to consider forgotten cultures made by indigenous Muslim and Jewish populations. Making this move has been the best, riskiest, and most rewarding choice I’ve ever made in my career, and I am now a cheerleader for the incredible forms of art made by ordinary people in these societies.
This was the book that convinced me that it is worthwhile exploring the past so as to rediscover and rethink works of art made by indigenous people living under imperial conditions.
I love its movement around the world, the close readings of works that no other scholars had ever considered, and the moral urgency that underpins every one of its lines.
It is often assumed that the verbal and visual languages of Indigenous people had little influence upon the classification of scientific, legal, and artistic objects in the metropolises and museums of nineteenth-century colonial powers. However colonized locals did more than merely collect material for interested colonizers. In developing the concept of anachronism for the analysis of colonial material this book writes the complex biographies for five key objects that exemplify, embody, and refract the tensions of nineteenth-century history. Through an analysis of particular language notations and drawings hidden in colonial documents and a reexamination of cross-cultural communication, the book writes…
I’m a scholar who has spent most of his working life looking at the history of North Africa. This passion was formerly directed toward looking at the conditions that Europeans imposed on local populations, but in recent times, I have moved solely to consider forgotten cultures made by indigenous Muslim and Jewish populations. Making this move has been the best, riskiest, and most rewarding choice I’ve ever made in my career, and I am now a cheerleader for the incredible forms of art made by ordinary people in these societies.
I love this book (and think you will too) because of the way in which it weaves together architectural, art, social, and religious history so as to tell the story of one of the greatest cities in the Islamic world: Isfahan.
Its beautiful illustrations take readers to a place that many will not have a chance to visit while connecting the beauty of its built environment to cultures that come before and after the Safavid moment.
Its author is THE guide to the topic, and gaining a sense of the history of built environments is of critical importance for anyone interested in the history of Islamic art.
Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009 This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501-1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi'i practice of kingship. An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91 at the millennial threshold of the Islamic calendar (1000 A.H.), transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi'i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi'ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in…
Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
It was only on a second attempt at reading it that I really appreciated this complex and wonderful book. Opening with the description of the murder of a manuscript gilder in sixteenth-century Istanbul, this book functions at one level as a captivating mystery. It is, of course, much more than that.
Made up of first-person narratives, I loved how animals and even inanimate objects are given their own voices. In one chapter, a counterfeit gold coin reflects on the intimate (and stomach-churning) ways such precious items interact with the human body. In what other novel can you find the drawing of a tree offering reflections about whether art should represent the outer forms or inner meanings of the natural world?
The bestselling murder mystery from Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
** PRE-ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK **
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award
'Wonderful' The Spectator 'Magnificent' Observer 'Unforgettable' Guardian
My Name is Red is an unforgettable murder mystery, set amid the splendour of sixteenth century Istanbul, from the Nobel prizewinning author
In the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day - in…
I'm a poet and creative mentor, and it’s the intensity of poetic language – its expansiveness and limitations – that shows up in my fiction and in the novels I love. Quinnis an exploration of male violence, incarceration, and radical forgiveness. I’ve spent a decade working with long-term prisoners in Scotland, trying to understand and come to terms with notions of justice and responsibility: does guilt begin and end with the perpetrator of a violent act or are we all in some way culpable? How can literary form dig into this question aslant? Can the unsettled mind be a space for innovative thinking?
Diop is a French writer (b.1966) and this book won the 2021 International Booker Prize.
I don’t seek out war stories, particularly those set in the trenches of the Great War, as this one is, but At Night All Blood Is Black isn’t your standard war novel.
I was hoping for something beyond the mud and the bayonets, the horror and its unending aftermath. I was hoping for an understanding of the paradox of being human and, even though the book is unapologetically bleak, I wasn’t disappointed.
How come? The love between the soldiers, Alfa and Mademba, is at the heart of the story – it’s a key source of its power – and then Diop delivers a blindside, which I’m not going to give away. Read it and disappear. Let the language be your lantern in the dark.
Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France's German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open.
Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost amidst the savagery of the conflict. He devotes himself to the war, to violence and death, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades in arms. How far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?
It took years of being an undercover writer turned book blogger for me to realize just how much of what's considered African fiction is Western publishers' profiteering efforts to churn out novels centered on colonial trauma after postcolonial trauma tailored to white audiences. When does the African reader get a break? When do we read books that aren't geared towards African pain? When I set out to write my book, I wanted to write a novel that documented the rot in publishing and how commercialisation of the post-colonial trauma trend has been to the detriment of not just the African reader but African writers as well.
There are few publications that document how publishing makes it impossible for African authors to have the same possibilities as their white counterparts.
This is a great book about a young writer's obsession with a scandalised author and the reasons behind the latter's disappearance. The writing has an incantational cadence that is truly stunning, and Sarr never relents in his critique of the unsavoury treatment of African authors by Western publishers.
Paris, 2018. Diegane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer, discovers a legendary book titled The Maze of Inhumanity. It has an immediate hold over him. No one knows what happened to the author, T.C. Elimane, who was accused of plagiarism, his reputation destroyed by the critics.
Obsessed with discovering the truth about Elimane's disappearance, Faye weaves past and present, countries and continents, following the author's labyrinthine trail from Senegal to Argentina and France and confronting the great tragedies of history.
Will he get to the truth at the centre of the maze?
A gripping literary quest novel and a masterpiece…
I'm passionate about stories that portray women as full human beings managing their passions, challenges, and obligations with grit because I grew up surrounded by a phalanx of them. Those who add “wife” and “mother” to their plate fascinate me all the more, especially as I grow older and better understand the pressures heaped on women. I saw my mother, sister, grandmothers, and aunties in all their complexities, building themselves up as they built families and businesses, starting over when they had to, overcoming the seemingly insurmountable, challenging the status quo, and never giving up. I gravitate toward female characters who share that spirit or grapple with how to get it.
I could not put this book down—and not just because it’s 90 pages long. The letter format instantly drew me into this candid conversation between two old friends grappling with the fallout of their upended marriages.
I love that Ramatoulaye shows no hint of judgment toward Aissatou about the different choices each woman made when faced with similar circumstances. I also appreciated Ramatoulaye’s frank reflections on her daughter’s opinion of her.
Written by Mariama Ba and translated from the French by Modupe Bode-Thomas, So Long a Letter won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and was recognised as one of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century in an initiative organised by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. This edition includes an introduction by Professor Kenneth W. Harrow of Michigan State University.
I am committed to creative work. All of my adult life has been shaped by that commitment. And while I don’t directly recommend it (unconventional routes are unpaved, and, of course, there be dragons), I know it is the route to beauty and making the most out of the world as we live it. We’re lucky to make music, show love, and hand it down to our kids, but we need to tell stories, and we must have stories to tell. All of this arises from your creative power. I know a lot more than I can say with words, but the languages of sharing emerge from venturing into the unknown.
So, first things first with this list of recommendations to unlock your creativity: you got to get yourself out of the way. There’s no better way to do this than acquainting yourself with Sufism, even on an introductory level.
I am very close friends with the pre-eminent American translator of the 13th-century Sufi poet Jalal al-Dīn Rumi, and it still took me many years to get to this book. Maybe everything happens at the right time, but you still need to settle with yourself to get any ball rolling, especially the powerful tool of your own creativity–the only medicine, the single refuge.
Written in response to more than 70,000 questions received about the Sufi tradition from people around the world, this keystone work is crucial for readers wishing to approach the Sufi Way.
Learning How to Learn presents traditional teaching stories, anecdotes, and question-and-answer exchanges to illustrate the barriers and prerequisites to Sufi learning. Shah uses the language of Western psychology—concepts known in the ancient wisdom traditions of the East—to explain how and why Sufis learn, and how spiritual understanding may be developed.
The author draws from a vast array sources to illustrate the challenges and pitfalls inherent in real self-development work:…
I've always been fascinated with the idea that humans have so many layers of consciousness, and reality is multi-faceted. I've studied Zen Buddhism, yoga, and for the past 43 years, Sufism. My experience of life has developed into a journey of changing difficult situations into exhilarating discoveries, finding hidden patterns in nature that delight me and tell me I’m not alone in the universe, and helping many people transform into beings of joy and gratitude. I’m beginning to see that our transformation delights and changes the Divine; we are not a passing phenomenon but contributors to new creation on a major scale.
This book is based on Middle Eastern poems from the 1300s which cuddle up close to you and turn you around, such that the world will never be the same again. You find yourself illuminated in new ways with every poem. How amazing to be so intimate with a great being from so far in the past.
Chosen by author Elizabeth Gilbert as one of her ten favorite books, Daniel Ladinsky’s extraordinary renderings of 250 unforgettable lyrical poems by Hafiz, one of the greatest Sufi poets of all time
More than any other Persian poet—even Rumi—Hafiz expanded the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Because his poems were often ecstatic love songs from God to his beloved world, many have called Hafiz the “Invisible Tongue.” Indeed, Daniel Ladinsky has said that his work with Hafiz is an attempt to do the impossible: to render Light into words—to make the Luminous Resonance of God tangible to our finite senses.…
