"In this book we have a new experience: an approach to creative writing that is different, that starts with research and social investigation but transforms the results into a literary text. Although the author is a foreigner--perhaps indeed because she is a foreigner--her observations of social life in Damascus are valuable, especially because she does not engage in touristic or orientalist comment. [She is able] to penetrate to the depths of Syrian life, in the same way as would the best of our local women writers." -- Mamdouh Adwan, poet and playwright, in praise of the Arabic edition "In this book we have a new experience: an approach to creative writing that is different, that starts with research and social investigation but transforms the results into a literary text. Although the author is a foreigner--perhaps indeed because she is a foreigner--her observations of social life in Damascus are valuable, especially because she does not engage in touristic or orientalist comment. [She is able] to penetrate to the depths of Syrian life, in the same way as would the best of our local women writers." -- Mamdouh Adwan, poet and playwright, in praise of the Arabic edition "Nancy Lindisfarne is a talented storyteller with an ability to create settings and characters as readable and convincing as most of the contemporary fiction in literary journals today." -- Carol Spaulding, Drake University.