Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah

UCLA historian Green (How Asia Found Herself) debuts with a captivating biography of father and son literary fabulists Ikbal and Idries Shah. Born in 1894 into a wealthy Muslim family in colonial India and sent to Britain for his schooling, Ikbal eventually abandoned his studies, instead indulging his literary aspirations by publishing poetry. Capitalizing on British popular interest in the region due to ongoing conflict, he positioned himself as an expert on Afghanistan (he claimed to be descended from an Afghan chieftain), penning several guidebooks. He went on to fabricate many more bestselling travelogues for places he’d never visited, along the way inventing stories about Eastern mysticism. Idries followed in his father’s footsteps, presenting himself as an authority on Sufism, though much of what he wrote on the topic was fanciful; he earned a devoted following in the 1960s, which included Doris Lessing. In a famous episode, Idries convinced classicist Robert Graves to translate a manuscript by the medieval mystic Omar Khayyam—purportedly a Shah family heirloom—that turned out to be fake. Green’s finely wrought narrative presents father and son as, in some ways, boxed into their grift by the strictures of Britain’s racist society and its Orientalist expectations; at the same time, the duo’s genuine love of poetry and spiritualism is palpable. This nuanced and erudite account dives headfirst into the messy contradictions of life under British imperialism for colonial subjects. (July)

Correction: A previous version of this review mistakenly described the book as the author’s debut. It also incorrectly stated that the Shahs were descended from Afghan chieftans.