Author: Robert Irwin

Cited by

• Andrei Codrescu (2)
  • IN: Whatever Gets You Through the Night (2011) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The automaton, a creature who is neither living nor dead, features frequently in the Nights... The brass oarsman who bears a tablet of lead inscribed with talismanic characters on his breast and who rows the Third Dervish to the Island of Safety; the little manikin which a dervish fashions out of beeswax and which plunges into the river to retrieve the sultan's lost signet ring; the air-driven statues which seem to speak... and the Ebony Horse, which is powered by wind and, when the right lever is pulled, carries a man through the air: they all simulate life, but there is no life in them.
    FROM: The Arabian Nights: A Companion, (1994), Book, UK