Drai launches the reader into a language of scents, tastes, and colors as seductive as it is ominous. A sense of danger, of unreality or the sudden slap of reality, lurks around every corner. Like Scheherazade, Drai is telling stories to save her life, narrating the world around her as an American in Germany in order to understand it. Just as Virgil leads Dante, Scheherazade serves as Drai's guide in the psychological underworld of this collection, interrogating the nature of truth, the truth of storytelling, and the multiple truths of stories of the self… With the deft use of anaphora, internal and slant rhyme, and short lines that make effective use of elision, Drai is a powerful voice singing a subtle, sensitive music.— Wendy Chin-Tanner