This fourth book of Nasrudin tales from the acclaimed storyteller, Tahir Shah, concerns the trials and tribulations of the inimitable wise fool's life in the Land of Fools.

Some Nasrudin stories are overtly hilarious, while others are downright odd, yet all of them get the listener's brain working in new ways.

For a thousand years, stories such as these have been relied upon - from Morocco in the west to China in the east - to impart wisdom, while challenging conventional thinking.

Nasrudin invented a device to turn fools into geniuses, and geniuses into fools.

As word of the machine spread, Foolslanders hurried to the capital and stood in line.

Paying their money, some of the dimmest fools in existence became geniuses in the blink of an eye.

But, one at a time, the geniuses queued up again to be turned back into fools.

Nasrudin asked one of them why he wanted to be turned back.

'I always wanted to be a genius, ' he said, 'but now I have experienced it, I realize it's so much less exhausting to go through life as a fool.'