‘Sabbagh is the RK Narayan of our times’ —Christopher Jackson, poet and biographer

‘Sabbagh gives us something we do not expect: a small place packed with complex dwellers’ —Adnan Mahmutović, author of How to Fare Well and Stay Fair

‘A cast of vivid characters, whose interlocking fortunes and fascinatingly detailed lives create a compelling story, yet achieve the status of proverb’ —Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL, poet and writer

‘A delightful kaleidoscopic tale of contemporary Dubai’ —Dr Pamela Chrabieh, Middle Eastern Studies expert and writer

‘This piece is an oasis of sanity in the toppled modern world, and a perfect travel guide to the soul of the princedom where multiple private miracles do happen’ —Svetlana Lavochkina, novelist, poet, translator

‘Omar Sabbagh is an extraordinary writer – intelligent, witty, sharp-eyed and compassionate’ —Dr Jan Fortune, Cinnamon Press

‘Sabbagh situates his prose and the reader in a space where we each rehearse our failures and perhaps, our small victories’ —Peter Salmon, author of The Coffee Story

‘Sabbagh captures the restless, cosmopolitan spirit of Dubai through a perceptive, touching and often comic narrative in which the dreams and dramas of several disparate and engagingly drawn characters are intertwined. An original, upbeat and entertaining read’ —Susannah Tarbush, journalist, reviewer and blogger