Sarah Cypher

THE IDIOT’S TALE is magical realist novel that combines the dark fable quality of Patrick Suskind’s Perfume with the multicultural family dynamics of Diana Abu-Jaber’s Arabian Jazz.

Born with blue skin, Elspeth Najjar is an outcast Palestinian Christian girl. In Arab folklore, blue is the color of magic, djinns, and protection against evil. In an upscale neighborhood in the Sacramento suburbs, it is nothing but a medical condition, and it offers no protection against a mother whose postpartum depression escalates into a full-scale mental breakdown.

When Elspeth is put in the care of a crazy aunt, she finds refuge in the family’s folktales—tales that also hold the coded history of how and why the Najjars left Nazareth for America. These dark stories once estranged her aunt from everyone; but for Elspeth, they become her only knowledge of the outside world. It is a world of exile, enchantment, ravening monsters, and murdered children whose ghosts lead soldiers astray. The stories, like all stories, hold filaments: strands of perception that weave into images, affecting whoever sees them.

As Elspeth learns to re-weave the filaments and use their power to change how the family sees her, she doesn’t notice how they are changing her. While events in the Middle East build toward the Second Intifada, she weaves a tale that could heal her family’s rifts, or become their worst memory yet.