Sometimes you do something that feels like your whole life has organized itself to appreciate that thing. The one special class. That crazy trip. This spectacular book.

As usual I have no idea how much of a clone of me you’ll need to be for this book to land. But, a childhood steeped in North African and Arab and Persian and Indian cultures. A taste for multilingualism and cosmopolitanism. A deep desire to understand colonialism—and wasn’t the Arabs did to the Persians those centuries ago, mirrored by the Geziri takeover of Daevabad, just that? Loving Amitav Ghosh’s memoir of studying in Egypt and al-Fustaat (old Cairo). All these conspired to hook me on the first page till the last.

So pardon me, I have a second volume to devour.