Publishers Weekly says: “Majdalani’s writing sparkles… Those looking for an enjoyable and brisk literary adventure will be very satisfied.”
At Bookwitty, M. Lynx Qualey pens this insightful appreciation:
The one thousand pieces hardly seems a coincidence, as Samuel Ayyad is carrier of a sort of 1,001 Nights-esque fantasy, hefting his disassembled story through the desert, to be reassembled elsewhere in a different context, an echo of The Nights’ movement from China and India to Arab lands, and from there to France.
Professor Joe Geha, for North Carolina State University’s Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, calls this:
[a] wildly entertaining novel. By the end Charif Majdalani has joined together all its disparate elements––the elegant and the ironic, the historical and the imagined––to leave us with a renewed sense of wonder.
And for those on their own lengthy odysseys, a 6-hour unabridged audio version read by Jonathan Davis is available.