"Many people in the West might not be aware of how much this collection means to younger women across the Middle East. Not only each particular story, and sub-story, but also the very storyteller behind, the great Shehrazad, is inspiring. The style is playful, the themes both universal and daring. Forget the sugar-coated Disney version; there is a core inside this world classic that was, and still is, quite forward-looking."

"The life of every individual, sayeth the sage, runs along the line created by the intersection of two planes: personality and social setting. I can’t think of any American novelist who ever drew that line more brilliantly than James T. Farrell in this trilogy. If this be “plodding realism,” let every American novelist start plodding Studs-style, lest the American novel fall down in a heap and die, as it now seems wont to do."

"The only novel really to do anything true with the waves of revolt in Italy in the mid and late 1970s (until I wrote mine, heh). The voice here is transfixing. The end is so incredibly moving. You will need to adapt to Balestrini’s style of forgoing punctuation, but once you do, you’ll be riding a bike with no hands on the bars and you won’t even notice that you, too, are doing something new."