"This wonderful book is enlightening and endearing, witty and wise. Salim the coachman tells enchanting tales, but suddenly he is struck dumb. Just as Scheherazade told tales to save her life, Salim's friends must spin yarns to save his speech. Set in Damascus in 1959, the novel alternates the real lives of our storytellers with stories from the distant past. These are neither fables nor fairy tales with everlasting, happy endings, and they often require readers to suspend their disbelief. Each chapter is preceded by a one-line hint of what is to come, such as 'How one person's true story was not believed, whereas his most blatant lie was.' The author (A Hand Full of Stars), who is a professional storyteller in Germany, has written a book appropriate for both adults and young adults. It is also a terrific book to read aloud. Highly recommended for all fiction collections."

"Timely and timeless at once."

– Malcolm Bradbury, The New York Times Book Review

"A picturesque collection of tales... wonderfully contemporary."

– Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A highly atmospheric, pungent narrative."

"A charming book of Arab tales about tale-telling by tellers Dickens might have invented."

– Lore Segal

"A master spinner of innocently beguiling yarns, slyly oblivious to the Western cartographies of narrative art and faithful only to the oral itineraries of the classical Arab storytellers, Rafik Schami plays with the genre of the Western novel, and he explodes it from within."

– Anton Shammas