"A dazzling literary debut novel-within-a-novel, in the vein of The Prophets, about a young author writing about the forbidden love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl--in which Mohammed's story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction"-- Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring. A publisher has given him three weeks to rewrite his book, and he must immerse...