Rumi’s Secret: The Life Of The Sufi Poet Of Love

Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love

by Brad Gooch

About the Book:

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Smash Cut, Flannery, and City Poet
delivers the first popular biography of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet revered
by contemporary Western readers.

Ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago,
are beloved by millions of readers in America as well as around the world. He has been
compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and to Saint Francis of Assisi for
his spiritual wisdom. Yet his life has long remained the stuff of legend rather than intimate
knowledge.

In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face
to the name Rumi, vividly coloring in his time and place—a world as rife with conflict as our
own. The map of Rumi’s life stretched over 2,500 miles. Gooch traces this epic journey from
Central Asia, where Rumi was born in 1207, traveling with his family, displaced by Mongol
terror, to settle in Konya, Turkey. Pivotal was the disruptive appearance of Shams of Tabriz,
who taught him to whirl and transformed him from a respectable Muslim preacher into a
poet and mystic. Their vital connection as teacher and pupil, friend and beloved, is one of the
world’s greatest spiritual love stories. When Shams disappeared, Rumi coped with the pain of
separation by composing joyous poems of reunion, both human and divine.

Ambitious, bold, and beautifully written, Rumi’s Secret reveals the unfolding of Rumi’s devotion to a “religion of love,” remarkable in his own time and made even more relevant for the twenty-first century by this compelling account.