The Singing Guru

From the best-selling author of Ganesha Goes to Lunch and Rumi’s Tales from the Silk Road comes an original novel about the life and travels of Guru Nanak, a musician, enlightened thinker, and one of the most beloved figures in eastern spirituality.

In this fascinating book, Kamla K. Kapur weaves together facts, legends, folktales, myths, and over forty of Guru Nanak’s poems—preserved in the Sikh holy book, the Granth Sahib—to form this captivating depiction of the leader’s life. Factual details are intermingled with fantasy to produce a symbolic portrait in which humor and imagination combine to convey a profound spiritual narrative.

"Kamla Kapur has created a Sikh parallel of Homer's Odyssey in the re-imagining of its founder's spiritual journey, cleverly recounted in the voice of an impish acolyte. As with that work, the prose melts into melifluous poetry, music to the soul. In company with the Sikh spiritual leader, Guru Nanak, we travel from magical place to magical place throughout India and are reminded again and again of what values should inform our life. You wait until the saga is over to exhale and still wish there were more. A ripping read."

—Thomas Hoover, author of Zen Culture and The Moghul