Ranging from the Persian Gulf to the American South, from ancient Greece to pre-Islamic Arabia, Ali Eteraz's stories observe an eccentric cast of characters longing for freedom. Illicit lovers playing with Koranic numerology, an enslaved man turned into a beast, a young woman rejecting her father's faith, theologically inclined brothers caught in a dragnet, a resentful poet's cynical humanitarianism. Sensual and surrealist, the stories in Falsipedies and Fibsiennes unsettle and surprise, but with tenderness.