El-Zein navigates era, place, gender, and culture with aplomb. He is equally convincing as a female Iraqi atheist as he is transcribing the frenzied thoughts of an Afghan construction worker speeding through the Indonesian rainforest. A highlight of the collection, ‘Bird’s Eye’, renders the final hours of the ancient city of Merv through the eyes of a famous geographer who struggles to arrange his escape. It is both a compelling, lyrical piece of storytelling and an admirable work of research. Competing senses of disbelief, loss and frustration are evoked through precise description and astute philosophical insights. It is this combination of poetic vigour and scholarly reflection that gives the collection its power.

Despite the verve and adventurousness with which El-Zein approaches his stories, their structures typically run the same course. The reader will not wonder whether tragedy will occur, rather which particular flavour of tragedy it will be. Certainly, though, these stories are so lovingly constructed and so relentlessly varied that their predictable outcomes are offset by the collection’s better qualities. El-Zein’s capacity to find hope and redemption in a world defined by pain is perhaps the most significant of these.