Summary

A giant storm hit New York City over eight hundred years after Ibn Rushd, causing huge destruction and marking the beginning of the strangenesses. The next day, Mr Geronimo went through his morning routine and made his way through the battered city to the estate he gardened. He felt strange, assigning this to effects of the storm, and only noticed when he did not touch the mud that devastated his work that he was floating slightly above the ground.

His life lacked continuity, beginning in Bombay, where he was born illegitimately to a Catholic priest who did not have earlobes. The lacking earlobes mark Dunia’s descendants, and many central characters do not have them. Mr Geronimo was born Raphael Hieronymus Manezes and adapted his name when he came to the U.S. to work in his uncle’s architecture firm. Uncle Charles...