The ancient land of Syria remains for many a sinister and forbidding destination, only recently opening up to foreign travellers. Marius Kociejowski presents a completely fresh and unexpected face to this mysterious country. Based on his own visits to Syria, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool describes a journey which brings him into contact with a host of colourful and unusual characters, each of whom is an outsider of sorts.   Abed, the 'street philosopher', and Sulayman, the 'holy fool', are two of these intriguing people. Their friendship is emblematic of the polarities of Syrian daily existence - an ancient culture threatened by economic and political pressures. Sulayman is an alchemist and healer who moves along a path of asceticism strange even to his fellow Muslims. Abed, while he is desirous of Sulayman's otherworldliness, also yearns for a world where, in his own words, he can 'cut the watermelon and live normally'. Other characters include Myrna, a Christian stigmatic, 'the prince of fools' Abu al-Talib, who speaks in parables and the jokester Sufi saint of Damascus, Shaykh Ahmad al-Harun. In their company, Marius Kociejowski walks the narrow line between reason and folly. The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool provides a memorable account of the deeper purposes of travel: to absorb the spirit of a place, to meet people from a different sphere of life and to return changed.

The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey

History

Kociejowski, Marius

Ancient Civilizations

Brécourt Academic

Based on five journeys, this extraordinary book, presents a fresh and unexpected face of Syria, it glows with the delights of the unexpected.

The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool

Middle East

The History Press

Christopher Middleton, long a resident of the USA, is one of Britain's finest poets. He was writing (not for publication) his 'Nocturnal Journal' during the two years prior to his retirement from the University of Texas at Austin, where he had taught German and Comparative Literature since 1966. The journal appears here in conjunction with conversations tape-recorded by Marius Kociejowski in London during October 2002 and June 2003. In both areas Middleton attends eloquently to his concerns as poet, translator, and essayist: values intrinsic and peculiar to poetry, the fundamental human aptitude (and craving) for aesthetic expression, and the reading of sign-systems usually deemed haphazard (e.g., a Turkish sea-mew, a soccer match, the aprons of waiters, rubbish in the Paris Metro, and a fresco in Cappadocia). Also included here, by way of introduction to the volume, is a brief but entertaining reminiscence of his first encounters with Christopher Middleton by Marius Kociejowski.

Palavers, And A Nocturnal Journal

Biographies & Memoirs

Middleton, Christopher

Arts & Literature

Shearsman Books

This collection of travel writing explores Syria, the tourism capital of the Middle East. ""Through Writer's Eyes series titles go beyond the usual travel guide handbook, providing details on settings, scenes, and cultural sights that have served as inspiration for writers."" Midwest Book Review

Syria: Through Writers' Eyes

Travel

Asia

Eland Publishing

Longlisted for the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize
Zoroaster's Children brings together the best of Marius Kociejowski's travel writing. A companion volume to last year's critically acclaimed The Pebble Chance, these essays, conceived somewhere between "a waning moon and the nerves behind a flayed man's face," evince the deep absorption in a people and place which are the hallmark of great travel writers.
Marius Kociejowski is the award-winning author of four collections of poetry, two celebrated travel memoirs, and a collection of his best essays, The Pebble Chance. He lives and works as a bookseller in London, England.

Zoroaster's Children: and Other Travels

Travel Writing

Biblioasis

About the Author\nMarius Kociejowski, born 1949, is a poet, essayist and travel writer. Among the books he has written are The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool – A Syrian Journey, now reissued by Eland, and a sequel, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus published by Biblioasis in 2010. His first collection of poetry, Coast (Greville Press, 1990) was awarded the Cheltenham Prize. His most recent books are God’s Zoo: Artists, Exiles, Londoners (Carcanet, 2014), The Pebble Chance: prose & feuilletons (Biblioasis, 2014), Zoroaster’s Children and other travels (Biblioasis, 2015) and Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2019). He has recently completed another travel book, The Serpent Coiled in Naples. He lives in London, England where, until recently, he worked as an antiquarian bookseller.\nThe bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires. 
A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves—and then behind the counter, into the overstuffed basement, and up the spine-stacked attic stairs of your favourite neighbourhood bookshop. From his childhood in rural Ontario, where at the village jumble sale he bought poetry volumes for their pebbled-leather covers alone, to his all-but-accidental entrance into the trade in London and the career it turned into, poet and travel writer Marius Kociejowski recounts his life among the buyers, sellers, customers, and literary nobility—the characters, fictional and not—who populate these places we all love. Cataloging their passions and pleasures, oddities and obsessions, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey through their lives, and a story of the serendipities and collisions of fate, the mundane happenings and indelible encounters, the friendships, feuds, losses, and elations that characterize the business of books—and, inevitably, make up an unforgettable life.

A Factotum in the Book Trade

Professionals & Academics

Based on five journeys, undertaken over as many years, Kociejowski's book is entirely concerned with the slow journey towards friendship. So we learn nothing about coups or conspiracies, iconic monuments or historic travelers. Instead, we meet a chance handful of Syrians, such as Myrna, a Christian faith-healing stigmatic; Yasser, a Palestinian refugee and political activist; Abu al-Tahib, a prince of fools; a modern desert father, Paolo Dall'Oglio; and the street philosopher and the holy fool of the book's title. It was written during the era of conversation, before the use of mobiles, and long before the current civil war. Saluted as a travel classic on first publication (just 12 years ago) it is now in danger of becoming a testament to the last of the old Levant.

God's Zoo: Artists, Exiles, Londoners

This beautifully illustrated book consists of a series of encounters with writers, artists, and musicians living in London, all of whom are exiles or émigrés displaced from their cultural and geographical origins. The subjects include poet John Rety from Hungary, painter Fawzi Karim from Iraq, novelist Moris Farhi from Turkey, poet Martina Evans from Ireland, artist Ana Maria Pacheco from Brazil, actor Andrzej Borkowski from Poland, novelist Brian Chikwava from Zimbabwe, writer Hamid Ismailov and musician Razia Sultanova from Uzbekistan, poet Mimi Khalvati from Iran, filmmaker Rajan Khosa from India, and jazz bassist Coleridge Goode from Jamaica. The book concludes with an autobiographical account. Together, the chapters form a perceptive and moving enquiry into complex questions of migration, identity, and belonging as well as a tribute to the value of art and creativity in human lives.

Carcanet Press Ltd.

The Pigeon Wars of Damascus

Marius Kociejowski follows up his now classic The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool with The Pigeon Wars of Damascus. A metaphysical journalist in search of echoes rather than analogies, hints as opposed to verities, Kociejowski discovers once again at the periphery of Damascene society—for the outcast is often made of the very thing that rejects him—a way to understand the challenges and changes refashioning post-9/11 Syria and the Middle East, reminding us once again of the deeper purpose of travel: to absorb and understand the spirit of a place, and to return changed.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kociejowski, Marius. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kociejowski, Marius

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kociejowski, Marius. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey

The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool

Palavers, And A Nocturnal Journal

Syria: Through Writers' Eyes

Zoroaster's Children: and Other Travels

A Factotum in the Book Trade

The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey

God's Zoo: Artists, Exiles, Londoners

God's Zoo: Artists, Exiles, Londoners

The Pigeon Wars of Damascus