We might call it being faithful to the phenomenological facts. Readers will be reminded of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical Macondo more than once, not only because, for us, this novel's local color is equally exotic, but because the mythological, the primitive, the superstitious are weighed in the same tray with the scientifically real. The commonplace life of the village of Fassuta is suffused with the supernatural. Here, the uncommon is common, too. Divine coincidence is one strand of the fabric of existence.
People foresee the future as often as they misplace the past.
Anton Shammas does not allow the magical to move beyond metaphor into myth, however, the way Mr. Garcia Marquez does. He is a reconciler, not an exploiter. He does not, that is to say, ''poetize'' these peasant peculiarities for the pleasure of big city tourists. One scene can stand for many that function in a similar way. At the behest of her brother, a delegation from a local monastery observes the girl and writes an account of her powers, among them an ability to describe entire shelves of books in the monastery library.