Eleanor Arnason writes of these tales: ''Squaring the Circle reminds me of some of my favorite books: Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Angelica Gordodischer's Kalpa Imperial, and Ursula K LeGuin's Changing Planes. I don't know if there's a name for this kind of fiction Faux history? Fantastic geography? Imaginary anthropology? Whatever it is, I love it. Humans have always liked to hear about fabulous journeys and strange distant places. Othello told Desdemona, ''of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline.'' Maybe books like this meet our need for amazing stories, now that the world is mostly mapped.
''Squaring the Circle is highly readable. (I got it through in one sitting.) And it's fun. There is a playfulness in this kind of fiction, a subversive undercutting of the 19th-century idea of the novel. It gives us all the pleasure of a travel guide, and the additional pleasure of being-- in spite of the meticulous description -- unreal. As it turns out, a cityscape can be as interesting as a bildungsroman and as meaningful. The first section of Squaring the Circle, ''Vavylon,'' is a fine description of a class society that claims to be egalitarian. Anyone can climb to the top of ziggurat, except the ramps are greased. I thought of Stalinist Romania when I read it, but it could also apply to the US.''