A harrowing tale of love, lust and betrayal in 19th-century Damascus...Hilu has taken a piece of history and cast it in another light

[He] writes with great panache

Gleefully bawdy

Exotic...a very bold journey

Conrad broadened the descriptive range of the English language (his glowing and luxuriant delight in words, the haunting decor of the tropics, all that maritime terminology) more than any of his contemporaries

Exquisitely crafted

The Mozart opera of novels and again a transcendent union of structure and content in which unhappy marriage is the reward for those who show a weakness of character and lifelong happiness is a province reserved only for those "who truly know themselves"

For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature

How could these novels ever seem remote...the gaiety is unextinguished today, the irony has kept its bite, the reasoning is still sweet, the sparkle undiminished, as comedies they are irresistibly and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be

That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with

The most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author's works

A delicate meditation on mortality, decay and the fading of beauty

Historical fiction at its best

No novel is perfect, but this small, wonderfully atmospheric and immensely poignant story...comes very close