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4.0

Salman Rushdie's "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights" is a gloriously funny and enthralling re-imagining of Scheherazade's 1001 Nights. Narrated by descendants from 1000 years in the future, the novel encompasses "the strangenesses" that occur during a time of unreason. As with most omniscient narrators, the text drops hints and get sidetracked, but it's hugely enjoyable and impeccably clever while it's at it.

The strangenesses are the result of dalliances with and descendants of djinn (fantastic and capricious beings made of smoke and fire) clashing with the human world, and the novel's fairy tale elements underscore the mundane agonies and delights of humanity. The result is a layered and affectionate war for the world. It's excellent for readers who like stories (even if they don't think they like fairy tales).

Netgalley Review.