From The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov:

From The Snake Stone by Jason Goodwin:

Insinuations of plagiarism aren’t exactly what I’m after, or even interested in, to be honest. The line in question recalls a particular passage from the Quran anyway, and we can extrapolate all sorts of symbolic readings in relation to this, and in both books.

What’s creepy is that I nabbed both books at a campus book sale, on the very same day.

As Borges as you like, but also a reminder of the kind of delightful randomness that sometimes comes out of buying books ‘old school’.