Where does fiction come from? From Jonah, says Gabriel Garcia Mrquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in his wise and amusing way: "Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."

The Jonah that Mrquez is referring to is of course the figure of the Bible and the Qur'an: a prophet from a small town on the border of ancient Israel. God orders him to go t