A poor fisherman casts his net four times a day, no more — that's the rule, and it's kept him fed for forty years. On the day this story begins, his fourth cast brings up something that isn't a fish: a sealed brass jar, old beyond telling, with a mark on its stopper he doesn't recognize. What comes out of it wants to kill him.This is a new telling of one of the oldest stories in The Thousand and One Nights — not softened, not explained, not written down to anyone. A story about a man with nothing left to lose except his own cleverness, and what happens when that turns out to be enough.For readers seven to ninety.

A poor fisherman casts his net four times a day, no more — that's the rule, and it's kept him fed for forty years. On the day this story begins, his fourth cast brings up something that isn't a fish: a sealed brass jar, old beyond telling, with a mark on its stopper he doesn't recognize. What comes out of it wants to kill him.This is a new telling of one of the oldest stories in The Thousand and One Nights — not softened, not explained, not written down to anyone. A story about a man with nothing left to lose except his own cleverness, and what happens when that turns out to be enough.For readers seven to ninety.