The writing is rich with perceptive metaphors, making startling connections between the human condition and the universe. All the stories, long or short, are well told, well informed and observed. The stories are engaging - the narratives driven by an inventive style of writing, which keeps the reader alert. The characters, many of them lost souls, are also intri-guing with their disillusioned cynicism, yet they never quite snuff out their kernel of humanity. In the ambiguous endings, there is always a smidgeon of hope for spiritual reawakening. Often their human self-expression emerges from lessons through suffering, through art, even surviving somehow in the wake of unremitting de-struction and metamorphosis centuries hence. REVIEW BY LuLi Callinicos