A Sudanese writer begins to suspect that one of his most idiosyncratic characters from a recent novel resembles--in an uncanny, terrifying way--a real person he has never met. Since he condemned this character to an untimely death in the novel, should he attempt to save this real man from a similar fate?

Set in both sides of Khartoum--the bustling capital city and the neglected, poverty-stricken underbelly--this is a novel of unreliable narrators, of insane asylums, and of the dubious relationship between imagination and reality.

Amir Tag Elsir is a Sudanese writer and doctor, who studied medicine in Egypt and at the British Royal College of Medicine. He has published a number of novels, biographies and volumes of poetry. His novel, The Grub Hunter, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011. He lives in Doha, Qatar.

William Maynard Hutchins, translator, is a professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.