"Every story one chooses to tell is a kind of censorship, it prevents the telling of other tales. . . I must get back to my fairy-story, because things have been happening while I've been talking too much.
"On my way back to the story, I pass Omar Khayyam, my sidelined hero, who is waiting patiently for me to get to the point at which his future bride, poor Sufiya Zinobia, can enter the narrative, head-first down the birth canal" [72-73].
[Numbers refer to pages in the Aventura/Vintage edition (New York, 1984).]
