What does the Shiite passion play have to do with Brecht's theater? Which poems does Goethe owe to the Quran? How is Ibn Arabi's theology of sighing connected to Alcmene's "Ah!"? And why did the Iranian poet Hedayat identify with the Prague Jew Kafka? Navid Kermani fascinatingly dissolves the familiar boundaries between East and West. Rarely has the essence of world literature been demonstrated so elegantly and politically relevant. Those who know themselves and others will also recognize here: East and West can no longer be separated. Navid Kermani takes Goethe's famous line literally. He reads the Quran as a poetic text, opens Eastern literature to Western readers, discovers the mystical dimension in the works of Goethe and Kleist, and reveals the political significance of theater from Shakespeare to Lessing to Brecht.