WINNING SCHEHERAZADE

An author noted for her startlingly original contemporary short stories spins several tales together in this appealing novel about the later history of the most famous storyteller of all. An introductory chapter gives an alternate version of Scheherazade not only surviving the 1001 nights but negotiating the freedom to return to her beloved Bedouin family (in a sly brief for literature's power, the Sultan's understanding and behavior have been forever changed by her tales). Once home and established as a storytelling authority, she unwillingly receives a mysterious visitor. Attempting to escape his continuing attentions, Scheherazade rides into the desert, where she falls in with a series of strangers, has a number of adventures, and tells several stories that enlarge on her own experience—stories told with a pungent lilt that perfectly suits them to their setting, all but two of them original. As the reader will have guessed, disguises have been in play and the Sultan himself may be involved—but probably not as they have expected. Like Scheherazade herself, Gorog builds a bridge between appearance and reality, art and life, expectation and event in this charming new story where ``Even the Sultan [becomes] a teller of tales.'' Like Cohen's Seven Daughters and Seven Sons (1982), a delightfully creative extension of the Arabian story. (Fiction. 10+)