In this novel, which has a real historical backdrop, the worlds of “The Abyss of the Hungry Eyes” and “The Path of the Sword” closely intersect. With a completely independent plotline, the book serves, to a certain extent, as the first part of the “Path of the Sword” cycle—because the action here takes place several hundred years before “The Path”…
The Arab poet of the 10th century al-Mutanabbi is a man of words and a man of the sword, a man of the road and… simply a human being, in the fullest sense of the word. But first of all he is a poet—even if his sword strikes with unerring precision; and the poet’s life is his song. “I Will Take It Myself”—a brilliant allegorical poem about al-Mutanabbi’s fate, the emir and, hardly less than, the shahanshah who rejected the sword in order to enter history as a poet.