Reading this book is both an intellectual and an aesthetic experience. Pandolfo's subtle and nuanced rendering of the meandering life of reason, unreason, terror, and hope is unparalleled in anthropological and psychiatric literature. Her deep knowledge of Islamic theology and poetry, her mastery over anthropological and psychoanalytical theory, and, above all, her capacity to listen, show what an anthropological devotion to the world might mean.
Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University Knot of the Soul is a stunning breakthrough book. Creating its own genre
not by mixing existing genres but by seeing beyond their divisions
it exposes the profound homologies between Sufi philosophy and psychoanalysis and the structural madness that haunts the subject, for good as well as ill. Beautifully written and conceptually precise, it cannot but convince readers of the timeliness and inestimable value of these marginalized discourses.
Joan Copjec, Brown University Knot of the Soul combines sensitive ethnography, Islamic practices of healing, and suggestive encounters with psychiatry and psychoanalytic theory. Pandolfo has written an unusually insightful work that serves as an excellent example of the riches that these three different traditions, in conversation with one another, can offer our contemporary understanding of madness and reason. It deserves to be widely read and pondered.
Talal Asad, City University of New York