Shusha Guppy is one of the most remarkable of Londoners, not merely trilingual in Persian, French and English, but genuinely tricultural, too. She has written brilliantly in both French and English, has made a reputation for herself as a singer and composer in the French cabaret style, and has been a tireless advocate of Sufi wisdom and Persian classical literature, in exile from a country that seems to be bent on destroying both.

This collection of traditional Persian tales contains two classics, one from Firdowsi’s Book of Kings and the other from Rumi’s Masnavi. The rest belong to the oral tradition of the naqal — the itinerant story-teller who would go from village to village, charming children and adults with tales that are rooted in the kindly morality of the Sufis, and which make abundant use of the magical devices of the Arabian Nights.

Guppy heard these tales in her childhood, has carried the memory of them around the cities of Europe, telling them to children, embellishing them with details and wisdom of her own, and now writing them down in polished versions that are models of narrative clarity. Not only are the tales a pleasure to read: they also show us that charity, honesty, fidelity and mercy are not Christian prerogatives, but the universal gift of great religions. They help us to understand the distance between the Islamist fanatics of al-Qaeda and the ordinary peaceful ways of Muslim communities in the days when Islamic societies had reliable laws, gentle customs and high cultures of their own.

Within the conventions established by that way of life, Guppy explores a wide range of emotions, and is never more interesting than when describing the adventures of young people in love, as they strive to consummate passions that are forbidden or frowned on by the customs of old Persia. The tales remind us that erotic passions played an important part in Arabic and Persian literature of the classical period — as they still do in popular songs from the Muslim world.

Indeed, reading these cheerful and heart-warming stories, one is struck by the overwhelming act of cultural suicide that has caused the mullocracy to deny not only the facts of life but also the great literary tradition that found such charming ways to approve of them.

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