Nine tales out of the legends of the Near East and Africa: the maker of the golden calf, the lost city of Irem built by Sheddad, Solomon and the demon Ashmodai, a Croesus of Yemen, a student of Timbuctu, a night by the Dead Sea. Iliowizi was a rabbi who came from Russia to serve American congregations, and he retold the lore he had grown up inside with a scholar's knowledge and a storyteller's liking for the marvellous. Fifty-six plates of Goya and Munch, from Edinburgh and the Tower of London to Egyptian pyramids, give these Eastern tales their visual weather.