Bücher von Tahir Shah

Stories are all around us.They're in the TV and movies we so adore, in the video games we play, and of course in the books we read. They're in newspapers and magazines, too; in the conversations we share with old friends, and with new ones. They're on our mobile phones, in aeroplanes, in submarines, and even in our dreams. Our obsession with, and craving for, stories rests squarely with the way we are so absorbed by them, just as it does with the way we don't need to continually consider how and why they work.Most of the time, when reading or listening to stories, we forget that these tales have been shaped through the passage of time. Like pebbles in a river smoothed by rushing waters, they were honed through centuries of telling and retelling. The stories contained in this anthology are a fragment of a tradition that has shaped humanity, just as it has been shaped by humanity.At The Scheherazade Foundation we regard stories and storytelling as an achievement of our species equal in significance to the development of language, art, and architecture. We invite you to dip into the tales in this small treasury - gleaned as they are from various corners of the world - to reflect about them, and to consider the wisdom they hold.

Stories are all around us.They're in the TV and movies we so adore, in the video games we play, and of course in the books we read. They're in newspapers and magazines, too; in the conversations we share with old friends, and with new ones. They're on our mobile phones, in aeroplanes, in submarines, and even in our dreams. Our obsession with, and craving for, stories rests squarely with the way we are so absorbed by them, just as it does with the way we don't need to continually consider how and why they work.Most of the time, when reading or listening to stories, we forget that these tales have been shaped through the passage of time. Like pebbles in a river smoothed by rushing waters, they were honed through centuries of telling and retelling.The stories contained in this anthology are a fragment of a tradition that has shaped humanity, just as it has been shaped by humanity.At The Scheherazade Foundation we regard stories and storytelling as an achievement of our species equal in significance to the development of language, art, and architecture.We invite you to dip into the tales in this small treasury - gleaned as they are from various corners of the world - to reflect about them, and to consider the wisdom they hold.

Stories are all around us.They're in the TV and movies we so adore, in the video games we play, and of course in the books we read. They're in newspapers and magazines, too; in the conversations we share with old friends, and with new ones. They're on our mobile phones, in aeroplanes, in submarines, and even in our dreams. Our obsession with, and craving for, stories rests squarely with the way we are so absorbed by them, just as it does with the way we don't need to continually consider how and why they work.Most of the time, when reading or listening to stories, we forget that these tales have been shaped through the passage of time. Like pebbles in a river smoothed by rushing waters, they were honed through centuries of telling and retelling.The stories contained in this anthology are a fragment of a tradition that has shaped humanity, just as it has been shaped by humanity.At The Scheherazade Foundation we regard stories and storytelling as an achievement of our species equal in significance to the development of language, art, and architecture.We invite you to dip into the tales in this small treasury - gleaned as they are from various corners of the world - to reflect about them, and to consider the wisdom they hold.

Inspired by a book his grandfather wrote eighty years ago, master storyteller and author Tahir Shah set about creating Scorpion Soup, an intense experience of interlinked and overlapping tales.Having been raised on stories from both East and West, Shah believes that tales work on numerous levels, subtly influencing the way we see the world, and the way we learn from it. Magical instruments, and secret machineries in their own right, stories live within us all. And, the way we appreciate them from the cradle is, Shah believes, part of the default setting of Mankind.Introduced in early childhood to the wonders of A Thousand and One Nights, Shah learned to receive and appreciate complex structures and storytelling devices. These have been used throughout history to pass on ideas, cultural values and information, as well as, of course, to entertain.Having been inspired by The Nights, and the way that one story leads into another, and yet another, Shah uses this framing technique in Scorpion Soup.An interwoven and intoxicating collection of tales, the book descends down through many layers, as one story progresses into the next, and eventually brings us back to the first.Unlike anything that has been published in the Occidental world before, Scorpion Soup is a rich and diverse feast for the senses, a book that instructs as much as it does entertain.

Enthralled by a line from the chronicle of a sixteenth-century monk which suggested that the Incas 'flew over the jungle like birds', and by the recurring theme of flying in Peruvian folklore, Tahir Shah sets out to discover whether the Incas really did fly or glide above the rainforest of Peru.Or was the Spanish cleric alluding to flight of a different kind - one inspired by a powerful hallucinogen, the so-called Vine of the Dead? After gathering equipment in London - and advice, not least from Sir Wilfred Thesiger - Shah's long quest begins. Picking up clues as he goes, the trail begins at the Atacama Desert with its immense cryptic Nazca Lines and thirty thousand mummified corpses. Then, on through the Peruvian hinterland of the Altiplano and, finally, to an epic river journey up the Amazon. There, lost in its seething green rainforest, he discovers the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe formerly infamous for shrinking human heads. Even for a traveller not unused to surreal adventure, there are many extraordinary encounters in this astounding travel book.Gruesome but often hilarious, Trail of Feathers is peppered with madmen and dreamers, with sorcerers, con-men and jungle experts. Each one reveals a little more of the puzzle, before Tahir Shah can at last discover the truth about the Birdmen of Peru.

When the Spanish Conquistadors swept through Peru in the sixteenth century, they were searching for great golden treasure. In 1572 they stormed the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba, only to find the city deserted, burned, and already stripped of its wealth. A legend says that the Incas had retreated deep into the jungle, where they built another magnificent city in an inaccessible quarter of the cloud forest. And for more than four centuries explorers and adventurers, archaeologists and warrior-priests have searched for the gold and riches of the Incas, and this lost city of Paititi, known by the local Machiguenga tribe as 'The House of the Tiger King'. After the lost city obsession had gnawed away at Tahir Shah for almost a decade, he could stand it no more. He put together an expedition and set out into Peru's Madre de Dios jungle, the densest cloud forest on Earth. He teams up with Pancho, a Machiguenga warrior who asserts that in his youth he came upon a massive series of stone ruins deep in the jungle. Pancho's ambition was to leave the jungle and visit a 'live' bustling city so the two men make a pact: if Pancho takes Shah to Paititi, then he will take Pancho to the Peruvian capital. House of the Tiger King is the tale of Shah's remarkable adventure to find the greatest lost city of the Americas, and the treasure of the Incas. Along the way he considers others who have spent decades in pursuit of lost cities, and asks why anyone would find it necessary to mount such a quest at all.