The Street Philosopher & The Holy Fool

By Marius Kociejowski

Book Overview

In the company of a witty, irreverent Canadian poet with a gift for listening, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool allows us to eavesdrop on the lives of pre-civil-war Syrians - their beliefs, obsessions and everyday concerns. Concentrating on 'what is poetically rather than demonstrably true', Kociejowski ignores the politics of the Middle East and the usual obsession with earlier travellers. Instead he describes his friendships, nurtured over a period of ten years, with a cast of extraordinary characters: a faith-healing stigmatic, a desert father, an embittered Palestinian refugee and the philosopher and fool of the book's title.

Here are the dreams, fears and aspirations of the old Levant and its fascinating flux of faiths. Today, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool bears precious testimony to the tolerant coexistence which characterised Syria until so recently.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1780600720
• ISBN13: 9781780600727
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Kociejowski provides intellectual, spiritual and social insights into Syria

The Times Literary Supplement ranked this book as one of the greatest travel books in recent memory. They are right. The insights are profound, not chatty as in most contemporary travel books. You discover real people in extraordinary circumstances, and extraordinary people in real-life. I really cannot do this book justice here in this review (I don't have the time to write a long review), but I do give it my highest recommendation.