This book pulls together the fiction of Doris Lessing and the tradition of Sufism and makes these topics more mutually illuminating. It is a study of how Lessing's exposure to a particular aspect of tasawwuf, the classical Sufi Way, has shaped her work. With very few exceptions, this book deals with the strain of Sufism popularized in the West by Idries Shah, *because it was Shah's work that provided the link to the Sufi tradition for Lessing. Although possibly not the only Sufi influence on Lessing, Sufi literature as Shah translated and introduced it to the West has been a major inspiration for Lessings Sufi approach, as well as for other aspects of contemporary Western culture, from literature and the arts to psychology and politics.
Academic scholars of Islam in the West have in the past created as their object of study something they call "traditional" Islam or "authentic" Sufism, dismissing practitioners such as Idries Shah, who have tailored their message to a Western audience, as not worthy of serious study. However, Edward Said's well-known deconstruction of Orientalism has highlighted the problem of fixing/freezing Eastern culture at one particular point and putting it on a pedestal to be studied (and worshipped or attacked) by those in the West. The traditional Orientalist approach has relegated Sufism to a dying past, as something to be preserved only through the efforts of the Western scholars themselves, as they study classical texts. But in the spirit of Said, I regard Sufism as a living, vital practice that takes many forms, from popular devotion at rural shrines across the Muslim world, to Sufi gatherings in the homes of urban elites throughout the Muslim world and Muslim diaspora (i.e. Muslims living in places like Great Britain and the United States).