The Legend of the Wandering King
by Laura Gallego García
Walid was a model prince: handsome, intelligent, skilled in the arts of warfare and poetry. But the kingdom boasted one greater poet than he, and out of jealousy Walid cursed the man to create an impossible work of art: a carpet showing the history of the entire human race. The poet died weaving it. Men went mad seeing it. And when it is stolen, Walid discovers his life's quest: to recover the carpet and earn forgiveness for his mistakes. Inspired by the story of a real king of pre-Muslim Arabia, LEGEND is a magical fantasy, a meditation on destiny, and an utterly thrilling adventure.

Excerpt:
The first part of a qasid, the nasib, customarily tells of the poet arriving at an empty encampment to find that his beloved has gone away, perhaps forever. Many poets had described such a scene before, since it is repeated in every qasida worthy of the name, and often with incomparable beauty. And yet, at that moment, no one witnessing the competition of Kinda could remember having heard such love and desolation depicted in the words of a poem. On the lips of Amir ibn Hammad, the poet’s beloved became much more than a beautiful woman; she came to life. Some members of the jury could not help but tremble; if such was the sound of these verses in a young boy’s mouth, how might they sound on the lips of the poet who had written them?



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