The photo of an unnamed Nubian man taken in the early years of the last century that inspired my depiction of Tein.

Interview with Laury Silvers by Richard Marcus in the journal “Qantara.”

”Although the novels focus on the spiritual and emotional lives of the characters, those lives only make sense in the broader context of life itself. I tried to depict the full spectrum of experience in Baghdad under the Abbasids, as I have understood it, with no apologetics or romanticism, but rather as a diversely populated and cultured, gorgeous mess of humanity.”