In a career that has embraced fiction and non-fiction, and bridged West with East, Tahir Shah has frequently commented on his own work - or on that of other authors - in a series of supplementary essays.

For the first time, the dozens of prefaces, introductions, forewords and afterwords produced by Shah have been collected and published in a volume of their own.

Fascinating for admirers of his literary corpus, the texts illuminate how and why Shah structured each book as he did. Lifting the veil on an author's thought processes, the collection exposes layers and sub-layers through decades of work.

Additional essays introduce material by other authors, such as the acclaimed and short-lived American adventurer Richard Halliburton, the medieval Arab explorer Ibn Battutah, and the fabulously evocative treatise on jinn, edited by Robert Lebling.

A treasure trove of thinking, covering a vast spectrum of themes, The Clockmaker's Box is an irresistible companion volume to Tahir Shah's extraordinary work.