Irving Karchmar is the son of Holocaust survivors who became a darvish of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order in 1992. He has been a writer, editor, publisher and poet for many years. He has an M.A. in Philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago, and has worked on such varied magazines as Hustler and the American Bar Association (ABA) Human Rights magazine. Between 1977 and 1985, he published Fantastic Films magazine. In 1986, Mr. Karchmar was on the staff that won the Trade Magazine Press Editors Award for work on the ABA’s Barrister magazine. In the same year, he published his first book, It Was Mostly You, a collection of poetry. He also writes the popular blog Darvish.
Mr Karchmar is the author of Master of the Jinn: A Sufi Novel. Heralding "the revival of Sufism" and "a fresh literary voice to Islam" Master of the Jinn has been associated with the works of Rumi and Hafiz as a link to "the ways of the heart in our midst today." [1] The book has been translated and published into twelve languages, including Russian (Povelitelʹ dzhinnov), Turkish (Cinlerin Efendisi),[2] Indonesian (Sang Raja Jin [3]), German (Meister der Jinn), Croatian (Gospodar demona) and Spanish (El Maestro de los Jinn).