Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

For Caroline

One is not a “believer” in fairy tales.

There is no theology, no body of dogma, no ritual, no institution,

no expectation for a form of behavior.

They are about the unexpectedness and mutability of the world.

George Szirtes

Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic.

Italo Calvino

She saw the dawn approach, and fell silent, discreetly.

The Thousand Nights and One Night