A brief chat with Pico Iyer at the Neemrana Litfest left me thinking, “now here’s a really nice person”, while his magazine writing and non-fiction have consistently been crisp, lucid reads. In particular, there was this touching piece he wrote when his house burned down years ago. So, like several others I know, I’m predisposed to like Iyer’s writing. He seems such a fine, gentle soul; brainy without malice.Which is why Iyer’s Sufi novel, Abandon, begins as a wholly promising read, yoking three interesting elements — Maulana Rumi, travel and Iyer’s writing. The storyline seems good. John Macmillan, an English post-graduate studying Sufism in California, focuses on Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi was a 13th century Sufi, originally from Balkh in Afghanistan, who fetched up all over the Islamic world and finally moved to Qonya (Konya) in present-day Turkey. However, because he wrote in Persian, he was very much an Iranian property who now rules as America’s bestselling poet (in English translation).Conferencing in Damascus, Macmillan hears of a secret, religiously explosive manuscript that apparently evaded the Ayatollahs and got smuggled out of Iran. He is asked by a professor to take a package to another Californian student of religion, Kristina Jensen. Instead, he meets her ditsy sister Camilla. Their consequent love story combines with a spiritual search for John through Syria, India, Iran and New Mexico.
