Paleontologist Howard Beamish is flying to Nairobi on a professional mission when his plane is forced to land in the imaginary country of Callimbia. Journalist Lucy Faulkner, on assignment to write a travel piece for a Sunday magazine, is on the same flight. What happens to Howard and Lucy in Callimbia is one of those accidents that determine fate, that bring love and take away joy, and that reveal the precariousness of our existence.

With intelligence, grace, and gentle irony, Penelope Lively illuminates the age-old dance of myth and reality in a novel sparkling with wit, humor, and keen insight into the storytelling faculty of the human mind.