'A dazzling and dizzying performance' JM Coetzee'This is a wonderful book. For anyone who is interested in telling stories and the hows and whys of storytelling, this is a beautifully lyrical, subtle novel that is just sheer pleasure to read. Hariharan takes the age-old story of Scheherazade . . .and the Arabian Nights to produce something new' Glasgow Herald'Using brightly coloured language with flair and precision, Hariharan provides the sequel to this myth of lust and cruelty, power and magic. We not only discover what happened after the sultan lifted his threat of beheading Shahrazad and made her his permanent sultana, but are given the female angle on it' Sunday Times'To summarise the tales or enclose them in a radical feminist reading, although many will make it their academic duty to do so, is to denigrate their teller. Better to listen to Hariharan's tellings and retellings - in turn rich, supple, sensuous and cerebral, by the shores of her ocean of stories' Independent