JOHN EGERTON (1935-2013) had been a “professional South-watcher” for half a century. Beginning in high school in the 1950s, through two years in the U.S. Army, five years earning two college degrees, five more as a college news bureau reporter, six as a magazine writer, and for the past thirty-five years as an independent journalist and author, he seldom strayed far from his life’s work: following the social and cultural, political and economic trends that forever have made the American South the unique place that it is, for better and worse. Until the publication of Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves, all his published writing, including more than fifteen books, has been classified as nonfiction. He called his new book "a fable ... a parable ... a cautionary tale" in the genre of "political science-fiction," and claimed that he "did not so much author it as synthesize it from hundreds of sources, compile it, and become by default the one to present it to the reading public. Fables don’t have authors. They’re found, heard, passed down."