The Shaving of Shagpat

Shibli Bagarag, a barber of Persia, is destined to shave Shagpat the clothier — who has one enchanted hair in his head, and rules the city through it. To do it he needs a magic sword, a woman who understands the business, and the Event. Meredith wrote this in his twenties in the manner of the Arabian Nights, and it is the strangest first novel by any Victorian novelist: an allegory about idolatry that is also a genuine comic epic. Fifty-nine plates, among them Walford Graham Robertson and George Harcourt, gather the Oriental dreamscape and quiet interiors that suit Meredith's Arabian tale of barbers, swords, and enchanted hair.