Synopsis (Credit: Inside front cover)

On a beautiful starry night in the city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay a terrible thing happened: twelve-year-old Luka's storyteller father, Rashid, fell suddenly and inexplicably into a sleep so deep that nothing and no one could rouse him. To save him from slipping away entirely, Luka must embark on a journey through the Magic World, encountering a slew of phantasmagorical obstacles along the way, to steal the Fire of Life, a seemingly impossible and exceedingly dangerous task.

Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a gift for his first son. Luka and the Fire of Life, the story of Haroun's younger brother, was a gift for his second son on his twelfth birthday.

(Bought new at Exclusive Books sale, Lifestyle on Kloof, Tamboerskloof.)

"But that's just a story," said Luka faintly.

"Just a story?" echoed Nobodaddy in what sounded like genuine horror. "Only a tale? My ears must be deceiving me. Surely, young whippersnapper, you can't have made so foolish a remark. After all, you yourself are a little Drip from the Ocean of Notions, a short Blurt from the Shah of Blah. You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identitiy, his meaning and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasise? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books."

A quote that will resonate with many readers and those in love with stories. And this story is told by a master storyteller.