The counterfactual 1982 of the novel plays variations on our historical record and contains clear allusions to the present.

Agile and silly and charming, he was a good entertainer, and he enjoyed the nonrooted, free-spirited life of a street performer.

I suppose I must have slept for seven or eight hours, getting the first real rest that I had had since the night before the loss of the dhow, for when I woke the sun was high in the heavens.

A certain openness of mind, and a literary good taste nourished, — not epicureanized on good literature, nor specialized on one master's bounties, is more necessary than scholarship to make a good reviewer, though scholarship, if not case-hardened, is indeed good.