"My life is a nightmare of predictability," bemoans one character in this collection of lyrically interwoven stories. Out of the banality of existence comes magic-realist accounts, fantastic events and aerial lives that, through their telling and through the force of story-telling itself, forge new ways of being. These stories are not just about stories, but about how each of us envisions our life as storyteller. Naranjo the Muse also deals with resisting the oppression of everyday existence. As in the labyrinthian The 1001 Arabian Nights, this collection reveals how stories save lives and seduce the mind away from an awareness of death, be that death actual, moral, political or death in the desperation of everyday living.