The author of this captivating book of short stories has used verbal gimmickry and complex plot construction. The good news? It works. There is dark humour and mysterious rituals galore, an intriguing mix that spans eastern and western mores. From Burma to North America to Greenland and the Czech Republic, the journey is a roller coaster ride that never ceases to enthral.

The book opens with a fictional editor's note in which M.Samiullah, editor in exile in Gjirokastra, Albania (address unavailable to wife, creditors and critics), talks about the manuscripts of the stories which he has found in a mysterious sealed box. He professes to have kept most of them intact and has no knowledge of the author(s).

The signature story, "Happiness and Other Disorders", is unique in that it is written in one long paragraph which is seven pages long. It won the 2005 CBC Literary Award out of 3500 entries submitted. It is an intriguing tale about a man who is floored by the very overweight soon-to-be fiancee of his nephew. An over enthusiastic embrace leads to a fall and a severe back problem which is not correctly addressed by his "janno's" (affectionate term for wife) father's old masseur's son, who is not conversant with deep tissue massage.

In this story, we briefly meet Raheela, the heroine of "Fifteen Sketches of Rumi", which deals with caste differences and art. Raheela, unlike her dutiful sister, Selma, is a tomboy, and elopes with a low caste Hindu boy, Vivek. The author's disembowelling of her subsequent disenchantment and mental degradation is chillingly poignant.

Saidullah's ethnic origins are never absent from his narrative (he grew up in India) and he deals with social and religious inequities with heartfelt candour. The story of Huma, in "The Guest", is particularly heart wrenching. The first sentence in the story tells it all - "Huma had gone mad". Huma is deemed "possessed" and subjected to horrific rituals to make her marriage-worthy. Finally, she is cleansed of the spirit of Callum McCallum, a Scottish rogue with an amusingly thick dialect who speaks from within her in a frightening baritone.

Another chilling story is "The Blinding Darkness", in which a Pied Piper-like figure walks into a dying village where drought and deprivation have rendered it pathetically destitute. The magical figure, who incidentally plays a flute, performs some miracles but the price to be paid by the villagers is devastatingly macabre.

Some of Saidullah's stories feature the same characters, but each time they reveal different aspects of themselves. Loosely, one could say that all the stories pertain to an upper middle class Muslim family, the Ashfaqs.

Via the medium of poignant story telling and memorable human portraiture, the author has written a set of almost folkloric tales that are some times dark but always meaningful - this is not a book one forgets in a hurry.