Street Philosopher & The Holy Fool

In the company of a witty, irreverent Canadian poet with a gift for listening, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool allows us to eavesdrop on the lives of pre-civil-war Syrians - their beliefs, obsessions and everyday concerns. Concentrating on 'what is poetically rather than demonstrably true', Kociejowski ignores the politics of the Middle East and the usual obsession with earlier travellers. Instead he describes his friendships, nurtured over a period of ten years, with a cast of extraordinary characters: a faith-healing stigmatic, a desert father, an embittered Palestinian refugee and the philosopher and fool of the book's title.

Here are the dreams, fears and aspirations of the old Levant and its fascinating flux of faiths. Today, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool bears precious testimony to the tolerant coexistence which characterised Syria until so recently.