Joseph's Box

Recently-bereaved Zuleikha MacBeth wades into the Clyde one morning and recovers a large box, with which she becomes obsessed. The discovery of the box brings her together with Alex, a lute-playing clerk, and they manage to open the box - only to find six further boxes inside which they can only open once they have followed cryptic clues. The clues lead Zulie and Alex on a physical and emotional journey modulated through music across Glasgow, Argyllshire, Lincolnshire, Sicily, Lahore, and finally the frozen peaks of the 'Roof of the World'. Zulie, a troubled doctor, finds herself sucked into the vortex of the terminally ill Archie MacPherson, an ambivalent, visionary ex-WW2 airman and Glasgow shipyard worker. In the manner of a lord of misrule, Archie's dying consciousness begins to shape and ultimately define Zuleikha and Alex's quest as they progress through the seven Sufi stations of sacrifice, truth, power, obedience, life, memory and beauty. Drawing on a wide framework of cultural and spiritual reference, this is an extraordinary and ambitious novel with a visceral sensuality and subtle touches of magical realism, in the vein of Okri, Murakami and Pamuk.

About the Author :
Suhayl Saadi is a novelist and stage and radio dramatist based in Glasgow. His hallucinatory realist novel, Psychoraag (2004) won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Pakistan National Literary Award, was nominated for the Dublin-based Impac Prize and was acclaimed by The List magazine and the Scottish Book Trust as one of the Top 100 Scottish books of all time. Saadi's eclectic short story collection, The Burning Mirror (2001) was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen, he has edited a number of anthologies and has penned song lyrics for modern classical compositions with the Dunedin Consort (The People's Mass), international choir (Project Paradisum) and with Scottish Opera (5:15). Driven often by music, his work has appeared from Cape Town to Kerala by way of Kiev and from San Diego to Singapore via New York City and Teheran. He has written extensively for the UK national Press, the BBC and the British Council.

Review :
'Linguistically, this is a word hoard, an "epic of mingling and mixing" ... A pliable, deceptive and maddeningly elegant close-up of a universe; and perhaps a truer, if splintered, reflection of this unfathomable world.' Scotland on Sunday 'This is a big book, in every way: it is excessive, extravagant, exuberant, exhilarating, erotic, esoteric, entertaining, entrancing and eccentric; and like the boxes that give it a structure, of sorts, it contains layer upon layer of allusions and connections. The narrative sweeps across continents, and the cultural references include everything from hip-hop to classical verse forms of the Moghul emperors ... I hope it will find itself on the holiday reading lists of the curious and the open-minded looking for something quite different.' RCGP Journal