Etel Adnan, a Lebanese American poet, painter, and essayist, lives in Paris, Beirut, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Among her books, the novel Sitt Marie Rose is considered a classic of Middle Eastern literature. She has been a powerful voice for compassion and empowerment in feminist and antiwar movements.

From the collection's title story, a long meditation on history and war, power and poetry, to its concluding tale, a strangely quiet vision of a tree floating in a Damascus stream, Etel Adnan's painterly vision, her cosmopolitan flexibility, and her philosophical bent are on full display. This is a woman, after all, trained in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, who became a painter, and then a poet. Her voice comes to us as something the opposite of her title: She is a master of light and revelation, of language, variety, and color.