Summary

I - The narrator sets this story in “Manira, a coastal town in a post-colonial African country” (168) where there had been a long and intense rivalry between what the narrator calls the book religions (“Islam, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant”) (168) in which God was found in book, and the spiritual practices of the indigenous inhabitants, who believed God was found everywhere. He says that legends of the area told of a fight between representatives of the various book religions (at this point there are also references to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism) in which they all got so distracted they did not notice the presence of the devil, who pulled them all down into the sand. The narrator then says this is a story of magic; assures the reader that he was there, and has first-hand knowledge...