Shahrazad Perceived the Dawn

There have been few novels written about modern Kuwait in the Oil Age. This isn't surprising: in the world's richest city-state, there's a lot of money to be made but few stories to tell. Over the course of five long Ramadan nights, six strangers driven by a shared destiny embark on a search for these stories - stories like there used to be, stories buried under sand and concrete, stories to redeem a city slowly becoming a non-place. But instead they find a tribe of organized cats, smuggling operations in the back room of a Starbucks, a desert of tires on the road to Iraq, midnight oddities in the marketplace, and a plot to bury the city under its own black gold. In the process, the story they find is their own - an absurd, tragicomic tale that would have kept Shahrazad herself up all night.... <br><br> This, Paul's first novel, was written in Kuwait for <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org">National Novel Writing Month</a> in the first 17 days of November/Ramadan 2003.