Cultural Research: Papers on Regional Cultures and Culture-Mixing

by Tahir Shah (Editor)

Every year the world becomes smaller as advances in communication, speedier travel and the evolving global economy bring nations into constant, and often uncomfortable, connection. Some societies will thrive as a result, others will decline. What determines whose values will prevail? What will be the future of the world's diverse cultures and traditions? The examples in this book vividly illustrate the urgency of the need to understand what is happening to us. While our diplomats seek to find solutions within an international legal framework, the complex day-to-day dramas are played out by individuals struggling with unprecedented pressures. Learning about conflicts in other cultures- conflicts our own culture has often helped to bring about -- can help us to understand the situations in which we find ourselves. In the process it can reveal what we have lost and what we must re-learn.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

Tahir Shah was born in London, and raised primarily at the family’s home, Langton House, in the English countryside – where founder of the Boy Scouts, Lord Baden Powell was also brought up.

Along with his twin and elder sisters, Tahir was continually coaxed to regard the world around him through Oriental eyes. This included being exposed from early childhood to Eastern stories, and to the back-to-front humour of the wise fool, Nasrudin.

Having studied at a leading public school, Bryanston, Tahir took a degree in International Relations, his particular interest being in African dictatorships of the mid-1980s. His research in this area led him to travel alone through a wide number of failing African states, including Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Zaire.

After university, Tahir embarked on a plethora of widespread travels through the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, and Africa, drawing them together in his first travelogue, Beyond the Devil’s Teeth. In the years that followed, he published more than a dozen works of travel. These quests – for lost cities, treasure, Indian magic, and for the secrets of the so-called Birdmen of Peru – led to what is surely one of the most extraordinary bodies of travel work ever published.

In the early 2000s, with two small children, Tahir moved his young family from an apartment in London’s East End to a supposedly haunted mansion in the middle of a Casablanca shantytown. The tale of the adventure was published in his bestselling book, The Caliph’s House.

In recent years, Tahir Shah has released a cornucopia of work, embracing travel, fiction, and literary criticism. He has also made documentaries for National Geographic TV and the History Channel, and published hundreds of articles in leading magazines, newspapers, and journals. His oeuvre is regarded as exceptionally original and, as an author, he is considered as a champion of the new face of publishing.

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Reviews

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authors:
Tahir Shah, General Sir john Glubb,
Robert Cecil Peter Brent among others.
The title of the last chapter is The Gateway of the East End.
An exciting read. Tells you what is what.