Octagon Press
 |
|
| Status | Defunct (2014) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1960 |
| Founder | Idries Shah |
| Country of origin |
 United Kingdom
|
| Headquarters location | London |
| Distribution | Worldwide |
| Nonfiction topics | humanities, cultural geography, literature, poetry, folklore, psychology, travel and philosophy |
| Official website | octagonpress.com |
Octagon Press was a cross-cultural publishing house based in London, UK. It was founded in 1960 by Sufi teacher, Idries Shah to establish the historical and cultural context for his ideas. The company ceased trading in 2014.
Octagon Press published many of Shah's later works. In addition, the publishing house has produced translations of Sufi classics and titles by other notable authors, focusing on the fields of the humanities, cultural geography, literature, poetry, folklore, psychology, travel and philosophy.
Shah used Octagon Press to increase the availability of information on Afghanistan, aware that there would be a need for such information after the country's recent history. Two of his books, Darkest England (1987) and The Natives are Restless (1988), "traced affinities between the English and Afghan peoples".
For many years Octagon Press sold the academic monographs published by the London Institute for Cultural Research, now sold directly by the ICR. A number of the classical works have been published with the aid of the Sufi Trust.
The Octagon Press Limited was registered in the United Kingdom as a limited liability company at Companies House on 10 January 1972.
In 2014, it was stated on the official web site that "The Octagon Press announces that it is to cease from trading in its current form. The works of Idries Shah will henceforth be represented by ISF Publishing, a part of The Idries Shah Foundation. Existing editions of Octagon Press titles will no longer be available. Idries Shah's corpus of work will be relaunched in entirety in new printed and eBook editions."
Notable classical Sufi authors in translation include:
The compilation Four Sufi Classics contains:
Idries Shah's books on Sufism have achieved wide critical acclaim. He was the subject of a BBC documentary ("One Pair of Eyes: Dreamwalkers") in 1970, and two of his works (The Way of the Sufi and Reflections) were chosen as "Outstanding Book of the Year" by the BBC's "The Critics" programme. Among other honours, Shah won six first prizes at the UNESCO World Book Year in 1973, and the Islamic scholar James Kritzeck, commenting on Shah's Tales of the Dervishes, said that it was "beautifully translated". At the time of his death, Shah's books had sold over 15 million copies in a dozen languages worldwide.
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