AbandonKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007 M12 18 - 368 pages From the national bestselling author of The Half-Known Life comes an intoxicating novel that's at once a stylish intellectual mystery and a pulse-quickening love story—the love in question being at once sacred and profane. John Macmillan, a classically reticent Englishman who has moved to California to study the poems of the Sufi mystic Rumi, unexpectedly becomes involved in two equally absorbing quests. The first is for a mysterious Rumi manuscript that may have been smuggled out of Iran; the second for the elusive Camilla Jensen, who continually offers herself to him only to repeatedly slip from his grasp. Are these quests somehow related? And can Macmillan give himself over to them without losing his career and identity? Moving deftly from California academia to the mosques of Iran, filled with insights into the minds of Islam and the modern West, Abandon is a magic carpet-ride of a book. |
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abandoned Alex Angeles asked beach began better blue C. S. Lewis California Camilla Camilla Jensen close Coleman Barks coming Damascus dark desert desk door dream dress drove empty everything everywhere eyes face Farsi feel felt Ferdows girl give gone hair hand heard Hello hills hope inside Iran Isfahan Islamic Jaipur John Macmillan Khalil kind kissed knew Kristina light looked lost manuscript morning mosque moving never night once paper picked PICO IYER poems Professor pulled Quran realized remembered road Rumi Santa Barbara seemed Sefadhi sense she'd Shiraz side silence sleep someone sorry sound space strange street student suddenly Sufi Sufism sure talk taqiyya Tehran tell Thank thing thought told took trees trying turned voice waiting walked window woman words
Popular passages
Page 312 - I didn't know where to go or what to do. I didn't know where to go.
Page 207 - Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
Page 167 - Is it the gods who put this fire in our minds, or is it that each man's relentless longing become a god in him?
Page 14 - Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love. Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.
Page 68 - Sheila Webb opened the front gate, walked up to the front door and rang the bell. There was no response and after waiting a minute or two, she did as she had been directed, and turned the handle.
Page 135 - Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.
Page 108 - O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs; let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
Page 14 - Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the youths; in his shadow I long to sit, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
Page 280 - symbol," he remembered, comes from the Greek symbolon, referring to one half of a knucklebone carried as a token of identity to someone who has the other half.