Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in this stunning meta fantasy about the power of stories, belief, and sisterhood Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel--until Myung flees, beginning an adventure that will spin her through dreams, memories, and myths Ask for the story of the mad sisters of Esi, and you'll get a thousand contradictory folktales. Superstitious sailors, curious children, and obsessed academics have argued over the particulars for generations. They have wondered about the mad sisters' two greatest marvels: the museum of collective memory that sprawls underneath our universe, waiting for any who call for it, and the living, impossible, whale of babel. Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to their creator, the Great Wisa. For Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not