Eight strangers were clustered around the campfire of the caravanserai - silhouetted, ragged, and ripened by adventure. As the flames licked the darkness, sparks spitting up into the nocturnal firmament, the traveller dressed in turquoise cleared his throat and told his tale...

And so starts Hourglass, one of the eight extraordinary Caravanserai Stories - short tales that take the reader on a journey of enchantment and delight.

Inspired by his Afghan grandfather's first book, Eastern Moonbeams, published a century ago, Tahir Shah's The Caravanserai Stories are part of the heritage of folklore, of which The Thousand and One Nights is a foundation stone.

Shah says: 'Teaching stories such as these have been used throughout much of the world since the dawn of human society. Indeed, teaching stories, fables, legends, and wider folklore are like encoded documents of humanity - constituting a repository of knowledge amassed over millennia.'

Regarded as one of the most important and prolific storytellers working today, Tahir Shah's body of work comprises more than sixty books, many of them containing tales and folklore gleaned from all corners of the world.