I had the (good, perhaps interesting fortune) to have not noticed that this book was a work of fiction until at the closing of the book. It was a fair bit of a disorienting dillema to have thought that I was listening to a real biography and that to have the veil lifted at the end to show the "man behind the curtain". It was actually a very great experiment, that one could not plan, in how our (read mine here) mindset behaves in certain, albeit subtle ways when we are reading a certain type of genre or when we think we know that the author is male or female, young or old. Then when you find out the truth you have a bit of a psychic whirlwind as your mind now adjusts from what it thought was the reality about the book to the new updated reality. I had a similar experience when reading Huxleys's "Brave New World." I for some reason had thought that this book was written as part of the "Beatnik" movement of the 50's only to finish it (I listened to it in unabridged audio) and then find out that it was actually written back in 1931, WOW stunning to think that he saw and thought this twenty to thirty years ahead of what I had assumed.

I cannot testify to the historical veriacity of this book, but I did enjoy the writting as well as the characters, it is definitely a nice solid read.