cover image The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi

The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, the Father of Rumi

Coleman Barks, Baha', John Moyne. HarperOne, $19.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-06-059194-6

If book sales are any indication, the most popular poet in America in the last decade has been Jalal al-Din Rumi, a Sufi mystic who died over 700 years ago. In The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthy Reflections of Bahauddin, Father of Rumi, Coleman Barks (who edited Rumi's poetry in the popular edition The Essential Rumi 10 years ago) explores one of the formative influences on the spiritual poet: his father, Bahauddin. In the book, Barks joins with John Moyne, an expert in Islamic Persian, in translating Bahauddin's ""The Drowned Book"" into English for the first time.