What is Dunyazad

Imagine a scroll.

You open it and there’s a story. You read it, then close the book. As soon as you open it again, the story is different—but within it is someone you’ve met before. Or the same town, seen from a different window. Or a flat stone on a rock, which thirty years ago was where another man stood.

No one told you. You recognized it.

Dunyazad is that scroll.

The Connecting Thread

One story connects to another through a person, a place, a moment in time. And sometimes through an idea—which is the most surprising connection, because it holds together stories that have nothing else in common. A provincial factory in 1991, a witch on a Ligurian cliff, a village on a planet with two suns: and in all three, the same gesture—someone doing a good deed in secret and telling no one.

These things here aren't references. They are doors. Each one opens and leads to the stories where that person, that place, that idea truly matter — starting with the ones where they matter the most.

For Readers

Once you enter, the scroll becomes yours. Dunyazad — who in One Thousand and One Nights is the sister who every night asked for another story — remembers what you’ve read and doesn’t repeat it. But, above all, she understands how you’re reading: whether you’re following a person through the years, if you’ve grown attached to a place, if what keeps you there is an idea that keeps returning. And she takes you forward along that thread, not another.

Two readers starting with the same story end up in two different places. That’s the point.

For Writers

Beneath the stories lies a mycelium: the thin network that exists underground and remains unseen, while what sprouts on the surface are the tales. To write here means to graft oneself onto that network.

Your story carries with it its people, its places, its ideas—and from that moment on, anyone arriving from another story can find themselves within yours, because you share a city, a profession, an obsession. And anyone who enters from yours can emerge into the rest of the world.

You can build your own territory, with your own characters moving through your stories. Or you can graft yourself onto what already exists, borrowing someone – asking the person who created them. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive: the roots are the same.

And, if you're interested, the machine underneath

For all of this to work, mundane things done well are essential. Every person, place, object, or idea has a stable identity that never changes: two Margheritas remain two Margheritas even a thousand stories away. Every connection has weight, because appearing in a scene isn’t the same as sustaining a story. And every narrative exists on a single timeline – the same for an August in the countryside and for a planet with its own calendar – so that “before” and “after” actually mean something.

Today, the mycelium holds together 7 stories and 100 references, of which 15 appear in more than one story, from 1991 to 2300.