Review: Marina Warner on “Accidental Gods”

At an event at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London a few years ago, Anna Della Subin was reading from Not Dead But Sleeping, a prose poem in which she revisits “The Companions of the Cave,” a story in the Qur’an, which also appears in folklore as “The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus” (and their dog); it echoes many tales of enchanted sleep, such as t…