Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties is a 2011 autobiography by Robert Irwin, a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.
Overview
Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties is a 2011 autobiography by Robert Irwin, a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.
Synopsis
In the summer of 1964, the author left behind the popular culture of the "Swinging Sixties" in England, a time when many were journeying to the East in search of spiritual enlightenment. In the book, he contrasts that hippie subculture with the "bombs and guns and [Sufi] mysticism" which he encountered on his own travels in Algeria.
Reception
In the Financial Times, Rory MacLean writes that the author "has given retrospective shape to his youth and formed a true story that will last forever, or at least until the pages of this wonderful, bittersweet memoir crumble into dust."
Steve Jelbert writes in The Independent that "the sheer strangeness of Irwin's quest [...] impresses. He goes on to say that "Irwin's witty, casually erudite tribute to his clever, naïve youth shows that there are no short cuts to wisdom. But it often comes with age."
