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The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin
The first book in Tahir Shah's trilogy of Nasrudin stories, The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin builds on his highly acclaimed travelogue - Travels With Nasrudin.
Having been raised in a household in which the wise fool of Oriental folklore was regarded both as an honorary member of the family, and as a problem solver par excellence, Shah was encouraged from an early age to regard the world around him through the lens of Nasrudin's humour.
This collection of hilarious original stories - charting the globetrotting travels of Nasrudin from Seattle to Samarkand, and from Cairo to Bangkok - turns the world inside out and upside down.
Having been raised in a household in which the wise fool of Oriental folklore was regarded both as an honorary member of the family, and as a problem solver par excellence, Shah was encouraged from an early age to regard the world around him through the lens of Nasrudin's humour.
This collection of hilarious original stories - charting the globetrotting travels of Nasrudin from Seattle to Samarkand, and from Cairo to Bangkok - turns the world inside out and upside down.
185 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 26, 2022
2 people want to read
About the author
Tahir Shah
156 books623 followersTahir 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.
www.tahirshah.com
www.twitter.com/humanstew
www.facebook.com/TahirShahAuthor
http://www.youtube.com/user/tahirshah999
www.pinterest.com/tahirshah
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.
www.tahirshah.com
www.twitter.com/humanstew
www.facebook.com/TahirShahAuthor
http://www.youtube.com/user/tahirshah999
www.pinterest.com/tahirshah
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 27, 2024
I have this book in the coloured paperback edition. Need A little salt and sugar as well as butter for your bread? Cheltenham England The Cloak of Wisdom, Page 69. And Chang Mai Thailand Page 149. Recommend this book. Recommend playing lucky dip with it.
September 11, 2024
Fabulous. Got a mystifying problem? See what the Mullah has to say. He says what one least expects and sheds light. It may be least expected, it is often revealing of one's personal present.
January 3, 2024
I picked this up randomly from a small bookshop. It was very silly.
September 22, 2025
‘The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin’ is one of the new books of Nasrudin stories written by Tahir Shah. His father, the author and educator Idries Shah, published four volumes of Mulla Nasrudin stories, and now the son is adding to the corpus of tales.
Nasrudin is a Middle Eastern and Central Asiatic trickster/joker figure, a "wise fool" whose behaviour throws unexpected light on the workings of the human mind.
Tahir Shah's new book is well worth spending time with. In it Nasrudin visits all parts of the world - perhaps in this mirroring the author's own adventuresome exploits (Shah is a world traveller).
My favourite tales include 'The Cloak of Wisdom,' 'Solar Remote,' and 'Blue-Ringed Octopus.' Among Nasrudin's bizarre antics is swallowing a bluebottle fly and trying to lure it out, then swallowing a sewer rat and trying to swallow other animals as remedies, as we follow through a couple of subsequent stories. There is also a strange innocence about him at times, as we see in "Cloud Maps 2.0.'
Here are some of his misadventures:
Stockholm, Sweden
Master Reset
Nasrudin was awarded a Nobel Prize for locating a master reset switch that exists on all humans but which, until that moment, had never been known.
Pressing the switch, which was located deep in the right armpit, wiped all memory, information—and anything else—in a person’s mind.
Once the award had been presented in the company of the great and the good, the wise fool was asked to explain how the reset switch worked.
Caught up with the excitement of the occasion, Nasrudin held up the index finger on his left hand.
‘All you need to do,’ he said, ‘is to press the tip of your finger very hard, as I’m doing now, into the armpit of the right arm, and…’
‘And…?’
The wise fool paused, blushed, and gasped:
‘What am I doing here?’
Huddersfield, England
Right Lessons, Wrong Birds
While living in Yorkshire, Nasrudin was a well-known pigeon fancier.
Each weekend, he would spend hours teaching his birds to fly backwards. Exasperated at seeing his neighbour behaving in such a nonsensical way, the man next door peered over the garden fence.
‘You’re never gonna get those pigeons to fly backwards! I’ll tell ya that for nowt!’
The wise fool regarded his neighbour with loathing.
‘Just because they haven’t yet learned to master what I’m teaching them,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the lessons.’
Jaipur, India
Medicine for Disappointment
A grave disappointment to his father, Nasrudin was never expected to amount to anything.
Well aware that he was regarded as a failure even before he’d set out in life, he strived far harder than his brothers or sisters—so as to prove his father wrong.
As a result he succeeded in ways his parents could only have dreamt of, and besides, he was well liked by all his friends.
Many years after his father’s death, Nasrudin was reflecting one evening to his host, the Maharajah of Jaipur.
‘Only now do I understand it,’ he said darkly.
‘Understand what?’
‘That my father, a sly old fox, knew the only way to get me to reach great heights was to taunt me…to insist my life was likely to be one of consummate failure.’
The wise fool paused for a moment and stared out at the palace gardens.
‘How funny that, despite his own mediocrity, he became great by making sure I reached such peaks myself.’
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dropping Out
After a frenzy of networking, Nasrudin was offered an interview at Harvard University.
None of his friends could understand why he had spent quite so much time in getting considered as an applicant, for there was no way he could ever have been described as being academic.
The first question at the interview was why he wanted to join the university.
Having given the question appropriate consideration, he looked at the interviewer in the eye and replied in little more than a whisper:
‘I want to study at Harvard because here in America all the most successful people seem to have dropped out of fine institutions such as this. Don’t tell anyone else, but my plan’s to drop out as soon as I’ve been accepted—just like all the best people do.’
Strongly recommended!
And I'm looking forward to the author's further tales of the wise fool—including his 'Nasrudin in the Land of Fools,' sure to be an amazing ride. :)
Nasrudin is a Middle Eastern and Central Asiatic trickster/joker figure, a "wise fool" whose behaviour throws unexpected light on the workings of the human mind.
Tahir Shah's new book is well worth spending time with. In it Nasrudin visits all parts of the world - perhaps in this mirroring the author's own adventuresome exploits (Shah is a world traveller).
My favourite tales include 'The Cloak of Wisdom,' 'Solar Remote,' and 'Blue-Ringed Octopus.' Among Nasrudin's bizarre antics is swallowing a bluebottle fly and trying to lure it out, then swallowing a sewer rat and trying to swallow other animals as remedies, as we follow through a couple of subsequent stories. There is also a strange innocence about him at times, as we see in "Cloud Maps 2.0.'
Here are some of his misadventures:
Stockholm, Sweden
Master Reset
Nasrudin was awarded a Nobel Prize for locating a master reset switch that exists on all humans but which, until that moment, had never been known.
Pressing the switch, which was located deep in the right armpit, wiped all memory, information—and anything else—in a person’s mind.
Once the award had been presented in the company of the great and the good, the wise fool was asked to explain how the reset switch worked.
Caught up with the excitement of the occasion, Nasrudin held up the index finger on his left hand.
‘All you need to do,’ he said, ‘is to press the tip of your finger very hard, as I’m doing now, into the armpit of the right arm, and…’
‘And…?’
The wise fool paused, blushed, and gasped:
‘What am I doing here?’
Huddersfield, England
Right Lessons, Wrong Birds
While living in Yorkshire, Nasrudin was a well-known pigeon fancier.
Each weekend, he would spend hours teaching his birds to fly backwards. Exasperated at seeing his neighbour behaving in such a nonsensical way, the man next door peered over the garden fence.
‘You’re never gonna get those pigeons to fly backwards! I’ll tell ya that for nowt!’
The wise fool regarded his neighbour with loathing.
‘Just because they haven’t yet learned to master what I’m teaching them,’ he said, ‘doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the lessons.’
Jaipur, India
Medicine for Disappointment
A grave disappointment to his father, Nasrudin was never expected to amount to anything.
Well aware that he was regarded as a failure even before he’d set out in life, he strived far harder than his brothers or sisters—so as to prove his father wrong.
As a result he succeeded in ways his parents could only have dreamt of, and besides, he was well liked by all his friends.
Many years after his father’s death, Nasrudin was reflecting one evening to his host, the Maharajah of Jaipur.
‘Only now do I understand it,’ he said darkly.
‘Understand what?’
‘That my father, a sly old fox, knew the only way to get me to reach great heights was to taunt me…to insist my life was likely to be one of consummate failure.’
The wise fool paused for a moment and stared out at the palace gardens.
‘How funny that, despite his own mediocrity, he became great by making sure I reached such peaks myself.’
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dropping Out
After a frenzy of networking, Nasrudin was offered an interview at Harvard University.
None of his friends could understand why he had spent quite so much time in getting considered as an applicant, for there was no way he could ever have been described as being academic.
The first question at the interview was why he wanted to join the university.
Having given the question appropriate consideration, he looked at the interviewer in the eye and replied in little more than a whisper:
‘I want to study at Harvard because here in America all the most successful people seem to have dropped out of fine institutions such as this. Don’t tell anyone else, but my plan’s to drop out as soon as I’ve been accepted—just like all the best people do.’
Strongly recommended!
And I'm looking forward to the author's further tales of the wise fool—including his 'Nasrudin in the Land of Fools,' sure to be an amazing ride. :)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews