I loved this book and could not put it down, which made for a very tricky week as I have a six-month-old who also didn’t want to be put down. It’s amazing how much reading you can get done jiggling on the spot with baby in a papoose. I believe The Hakawati will top my list for the year’s most inventive, witty, adventurous and sexiest reads. It’s pure genius.

Hakawati is Arabic for storyteller, and the narrator of this tale is Osama al-Kharrat, a young Lebanese man who has returned to present day war-torn Beirut to join his family at his father’s deathbed. His story is but one thread amid a sumptuous saga of Middle Eastern history and legend. Fabulous stories of warriors, sultans, imps, seductresses, jinnis and Crusaders; each fable evoking the diversity and depth of the Arab world. The Hakawati is also a story about the meaning of storytelling, the power and potency of carefully chosen words. ‘Listen’ is the seductive invitation used by the hakawati to begin a story and fittingly it is the novel’s last word, as you’ll want to turn back to page one, and start reading it over again.