Review by Booklist Review
Seven centuries after his death, Jalal al-Din Rumi is enjoying a heck of a comeback. The poet laureate of Sufism, Rumi's innovations proved so fundamental that his style and language continue to be imitated throughout the Islamic world. And he has been cited as a great mystic by no less an authority than Mike D of the Beastie Boys. Far beyond what the quotable snippets of his poetry in self-help tomes and love anthologies indicate, he was a magnificent poet, acclaimed by kings and vagabonds alike in his lifetime. Although there is little new insight in Wines' Spiritual Biography, and it lacks the depth of Annemarie Schimmel's 1992 effort, her vivid, well-researched portrait of the poet is the first life of Rumi in English that is intended for the general readership Rumi cared most to have. In particular, she breathes life into one of the great Platonic love stories of all time, that of Rumi and his muse Shams, an old and dirty dervish. The poetry that sprang from that relationship receives a much-needed new English translation in The Illustrated Rumi, in which parables and stories and bits of poems share the pages with breathtaking Islamic art from throughout the world, especially that of artists who responded to Rumi's mystical poetry with esoteric paintings and drawings. The choices made for the translation are sometimes problematic, especially when only selections from poems are rendered. Also, the parables and poems may confound twenty-first-century Americans who lack the knowledge of Rumi's cultural context that the translators fail to provide. Yet the quality of these versions is often higher than that of Coleman Barks' popular Englishings, and the beautiful art drenches readers in the world of mystical Islamic devotion that Rumi sought and shared. --John Green
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
