Most, if not all, of the popularly read versions of Rumi are not direct translations - they are translations of translations. Dr. Nevit Ergin is a scholar specializing in Sufic literature and Rumi, and is fluent in Rumi's original language of Farsi, or Persian as it is also known. In Crazy As We Are he presents 128 previously untranslated quatrains direct from the Farsi. Dr. Nevit Ergin is a retired surgeon who practiced for more than thirty years. He has been a student of Sufism for more than fifty years, and has published sixteen volumes of Rumi's Divan-i-Kebir. He lives in San Mateo, California.