All that I can say of it is that it is tragic and beautiful, and obviously authentic in every finely drawn detail of its background, like a Persian miniature on ivory.It is a Failure Story on the epic scale, though the enemy that destroys Ghazan, the Ilkhan, or hereditary leader of a tribe of 100,000 Falqanis, is 'progress', as enforced by the corrupt politicians of Teheran at the insistence of dollar-happy foreign missions, determined to enforce settlement, if need be at the point of a sword, upon those who have been nomads for seven centuries.The story, though its undertones are intensely moving, is all the more effective for being told passionlessly, and the sense of the thin, sunny air of the mountains, set above the cypress-lined valleys that are the very essence of the Persia I remember, is here captured with a magical skill and power.- Cedric Salter in the Broadsheet. From the World Books edition flyleaf.