I first encountered this work, strangely, while following my sister around for a day of classes while visiting for Thanksgiving break. I had more or less forgotten it until I read Son of a Witch, in which a conference of the birds of Oz is a prominent plot point. I have to imagine that the conference in Maguire’s book is meant to allude to this one, though they seem to me to be about quite different things. (But then, maybe I’m missing something.)

Setting all of that aside: this is quite an elegant, if at times repetitive, recitation of Sufi belief, drawn with beautiful imagery. I have to imagine that there are certain concepts and expressions which simply don’t translate all that well from ancient Persian - that of fraternal love, for example, or the whole constellation of concepts around grief-stricken love, since the English rendition of them sounds rather maudlin and overdone. While I can’t say that I’m particularly taken by it, the idea that one must obliterate and subjugate the self in order to become one with a higher power is quite wonderfully drawn here, and the classical notion of using birds to symbolize the various foibles of human character is superb. The Conference of the Birds is certainly not light reading to the modern eye, but it’s well worth the journey (as it were).