My Heart Broke Open And

To Be Born Again,' Sang Gibreal Farishta Tumbling From The Heaveans, 'first You Have To Die. Ho Ji! Ho Ji! To Land Upon The Bosomy Earth, First One Needs To Fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How To Ever Smile Again, If First You Won't Cry? How To Win The Darling's Love Mister, Without A Sigh?

Khattam-shud,' He Said Slowly, 'is The Arch-enemy Of All Stories, Even Of Language Itself. He Is The Prince Of Silence And The Foe Of Speech. And Because Everything Ends, Because Dreams End, Stories End, Life Ends, At The Finish Of Everything We Use His Name. "it's Finished," We Tell One Another, "it's Over. Khattam-shud: The End.

If The Culture Shifts, If People Think Differently About Women, The Art Will Shift, Too. You Can't Ask Art To Make Social Change. It's Not What It's For.

I Always Thought Storytelling Was Like Juggling [...] You Keep A Lot Of Different Tales In The Air, And Juggle Them Up And Down, And If You're Good You Don't Drop Any.

Laila Lalami Has Fashioned An Absorbing Story Of One Of The First Encounters Between Spanish Conquistadores And Native Americans, A Frightening, Brutal, And Much-falsified History That Here, In Her Brilliantly Imagined Fiction, Is Rewritten To Give Us Something That Feels Very Like The Truth.