STUDENT

Talib is a poor knob-polisher at the court of Babylon: the young man, kind and noble of spirit, falls in love with the king's daughter, following the classic fairy-tale script. But it is decreed that she can only marry the one who brings her a diamond as big as a bull's head as a gift. Thus, Talib sets off in search of the stone, having numerous bizarre encounters throughout a cosmos formed of four concentric spheres (Fire, Earth, Sky, Firmament): he joins the racist Miralem, a tax collector in the world of clouds, meets Nizar, a monk hostile to Desire, negotiates with the Swamp Dragon, visits the metropolis with asparagus-shaped pinnacles, reaches the Moon to retrieve a vial of shadow, and will have the fortune of witnessing the show of the slowest traveling circus in the world, and the misfortune of finding himself hanging from a cloud, along a journey dictated indeed by love, but in reality fueled by curiosity.