"An intricately woven and multi-layered narrative, where content and form are closely interconnected in a spiraling structure... by the end of the book we are thrown right back to the beginning by the force of its spiraling form and, like the characters of the stories told by the narrator, are left in desperate search to fill that emptiness left by loss... The result is simultaneously a novel that reflects some of the collective themes of the Palestinians -- the collective loss, absence, and memory in this case -- as well as a novel that expands beyond these limits and opens up to meanings that are universal and can be related to by every reader."-- "The Markaz Review"