The first two novellas in this volume, Madam Vienna and The Secret of His Power, come from the peak period in Idris' career, the late 1950s and early 1960s, while New York 80 belongs to his late period, the 1980s. They all deal with a seminal theme in Arabic fiction: the East-West encounter, often treated allegorically by Arab writers through a love story between an Arab man and a Western woman who stand for their respective cultures.