Arabian Night's Entertainments

The Arabian Nights

by Anonymous, Robert L. Mack (Editor), Antoine Galland (Original Translator)

No other edition offers extensive textual apparatus such as explanatory notes, plot summaries, particularly vital as stories are complex and interwoven.

The Sultan Schahriar's misguided resolution to shelter himself from the possible infidelities on his wives leads to an outbreak of barbarity in his kingdoms and a reign of terror in his court, stopped only by the resourceful Scheherazade. The tales with which Scheherazade nightly postpones the muderous intent of the sultan have entered our language and our lives like no other collection of narratives before or since. Sinbad, Aladdin, Ali Baba: all make their spectacular entrance on to the
stage of English literary history in the Arabian Nights Entertainments (1704-17). The stories contained in this 'store house of ingenious fiction' initiate a pattern of literary reference and influence which today remains as powerful and intense as it was throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

This edition reproduces in its entirety the earliest English translation of the French orientalist Antoine Galland's Mille et une Nuits. This remained for over a century the only English translation of the story cycle, influencing an incalculable number of writers, and no other edition offers the complete text supplemented by full textual apparatus.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Literature, Mythology, Fairy Tales

939 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 800

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a little girl my grandmother gave me a big, blue, cloth bound edition of this book. It had the most exquisite coloured plates protected by tissue paper interleaved with the printed sheets. It was the perfect storybook for a bookish, fanciful child living in an abusive home. I spent a year reading this book. Every night I would read it and disappear from all the fear and unpleasantness around me into this realm of people in exotic clothes who could do magic. I cherished the book. I took it everywhere. It was never on display but always kept in the airing cupboard where it would be warm and dry. I think I got this from my father. He used to read dirty books in the bath and leave them in the airing cupboard to dry out. I read quite a lot of Miller, DH Lawrence etc. that way.

One year I rented my London flat to a thieving pig. He looked very nice, tall, handsome, very well-spoken and lived with his girlfriend and their baby. Her father would phone me from time to time as he was worried that the man was not a good person for his daughter. He was right, but she was his match, just as dishonest and also lazy. He would write cheques with the sixes and nines reversed (in his favour), ones he'd 'forgotten' to sign.

I phoned his father. He was all shock/horror on the phone. But when he came round he threatened me. If I took it further he and his sons would make me very sorry. I phoned her father, he came round in his taxi (he was a taxi driver), paid me the owed rent. I gave the man notice. He had the cheek to ask me for a reference so he could get another place. When I refused and eventually got possession of the place, he superglued the bedroom doors locks, ripped the panelling off the bathtub, and threw black paint on the mattresses. And stole all my rare books. One was an amazing underground banned book on Turkey, a sort of guide book to what they don't want you to see, went missing and another one was this one.

I kind of wish I had a book like this again. One with the capability of taking me far away into another realm where the troubles of the day just don't intrude. But I'm grown up now and books no longer have that amazing, all-encompassing, lost for hours effect.

Rewritten June 2021

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read One Thousand and One Nights I was literally put under the book’s spell – charmed, enchanted and bewitched. It isn’t just the magic of fairytales. It is first of all magic of the oriental world. And of course I was at once mesmerized with the incredible frame tale of Shahryar and Scheherazade.
Nowhere is so much magic as in Arabian Nights: magical word opening the cave door: “‘Open, Sesame!’ And forthwith appeared a wide doorway in the face of the rock. The robbers went in, and last of all their chief, and then the portal shut of itself,” powerful Jinni sealed in the magical lamp: “This is not he, O my mother. This who appeared before thee is the Slave of the Lamp!” and many, many others.
And of course my favourite tales are Voyages of Sindbad the Seaman… Stunning adventures in distant lands full of fantastic beasts, evil creatures, monsters, wonders and miracles. And most of all I was stupefied and simultaneously disgusted with Old Man of the Sea:

I told them all that had betided me, whereat they marveled with exceeding marvel and said: ‘He who rode on thy shoulder is called the Sheikh-al-Bahr or Old Man of the Sea, and none ever felt his legs on neck and came off alive but thou, and those who die under him he eateth. So praised be Allah for thy safety!’

Even nowadays I gratefully remember this miraculous book, which practically was for me a door into the absolutely new world.
Miracles and magic keep calling…

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, if only I could write like the late Sir Richard Burton! Normally I dislike translations, but to refuse to read The Arabian Nights on those grounds would be like refusing to read the Bible. I love parodying people's styles, and I have tried my utmost to parody Burton convincingly, but I can't do it. He's too clever. He has taken this unique book, a miraculous survival from the most ancient antiquity, and he has created a unique language to make it accessible to us: the backbone is a kind of Spenserian English, but he has modified it in subtle ways, adding some French roots here, some Nordic ones there, pinches of more obscure ingredients when he feels he needs them, creating alliterations and internal rhymes and odd sentence structures to echo the rhythms of the original, inserting endless footnotes to tell us poor people what we're missing through not knowing Arabic.

Burton is always present in the text, leading us by the hand through his favorite passages, flooring us with a jaw-droppingly inappropriate comment one moment (it isn't sexist or racist: it transcends sexism and racism) and then turning round a second later to hit us with a marvellous piece of poetry or romance or heroism, crowing over his rivals' mistakes, inserting irrelevant anecdotes or obscure pieces of etymology that he just couldn't resist, showing off his knowledge of the seventeen languages he speaks fluently and the others that he just has a passing acquaintance with. And all the time, often without us even realizing what he's doing, telling us about Islam, the religion so many of us Westerners fear without understanding it, showing us what it's like from the inside, from the perspective of an eighth century cobbler or Caliph or slave-girl, how, whatever else it may be, it is a great religion, one that hundreds of millions of people have gladly lived and died in, without ever questioning the will of Allah or his prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.

I have never read anything like it.

[فؤاد · Rating 5 out of 5]

داستان های هزار و يک شب، محصول تلاقى چندين نسل و چندين قرن اسطوره است. و هر فرهنگ و هر قرن، ردّ پاى خود را بر اين كتاب، كه بايد به حق آن را دائرة المعارف افسانه ها خواند، بر جا گذاشته است. ريشه هاى "شب هاى عربى" (چنان كه اروپاييانش مى خوانند) را بايد در جلگه هاى هندوستان جست، محل تولّد افسانه ها از كليله و دمنه تا رامایانا، سپس ردّش را تا "هزارافسان" ايران گرفت و بعد در پس كوچه هاى قاهره و دمشق گمش كرد، تا چند صد سال بعد سر از پاریس درآورد.

شكاف دو فرهنگ، يكى هندواروپايى و ديگر سامى، را مى توان به طور دقيق در خود كتاب بازديد. کتاب در طیّ دو دوره نوشته شده: یک دورۀ اولیه، که شامل بیشتر بخش های نخست کتاب مى شود. و یک دورۀ اخیر، که بيش از چند صد سال قدمت ندارد، و بيشتر بخش دوم كتاب را در بر مى گيرد. دورۀ اولیه احتمالاً در هند و ایران نوشته و تکمیل شده است، سپس به دنیای عربی-اسلامی راه یافته و نیمۀ دوم به آن ضمیمه گشته است. بورخس در مقالهٔ پایانی کتاب نه مقاله درباره دانته می گوید که نخستین بار غربیان هزار و یک شب را در مصر یافتند؛ در آن سرزمین، نقّالان دوره گردى بودند كه در کوچه و بازار به نقل داستان های هزار و یک شب می پرداختند. نیمۀ دوم در حقیقت همچون لحاف چهل تکه ایست که به نظر می رسد هر تکه اش توسط یکی از این نقّالان دوره گرد بر پردۀ هزار و یک شب دوخته شده و گاه حتی برخی از حکایات (مانند افسانۀ دخترک کبوترپوش) دوبار تکرار شده اند.

اسلوب هاى خاص قصه گويى (مثل شیوۀ داستان در داستان)، مضامین مشترک (مثل خیانت زنان و شوهران كه بارها و بارها در بخش نخست در داستان هاى مختلف تكرار مى شود)، روایت های بلند و کمابیش پیوسته، و حضور کمرنگ تر جادو از مشخصه های نیمۀ نخست هزار و یک شب است.

در حالی که ورود اساطیر عربی (از جمله نسناس و جنّ) و روایات اسلامی-مصرى (ماجراهای هارون الرشید، ماجرای باغ ارم، ماجراى مأمون و اهرام مصر و...)، روايت هاى کوتاه و كمابيش گسسته، پیروی نکردن حکایات از اسلوب واحد (بر خلاف اسلوب و مضمون واحدی که در بیشتر بخش نخست حکم فرما بود)، حضور پررنگ جادو، و تقلیدِ برخی حکایات از اساطیر یونانی که تا چند صد سال گذشته برای شرقیان ناشناخته بودند (مشخصاً: اوديسه)، از مشخصه های نیمۀ دوم است. و مخصوصاً عنصر اخير، يعنى تقليد از اوديسه شاهدى روشن بر متأخّر بودن نيمه دوم هزار و يک شب است.


سندباد و اوديسه


ماجراهاى سندباد بحرى که از زیباترین قصه های هزار و یک شب است، در حقیقت نسخۀ شرقی شدۀ "اودیسه" است. از جمله سفر سوم که بعینه از اودیسه اقتباس شده. سندباد و دوستانش به جزيره اى مى رسند كه غولى در آن سكونت دارد، غول سندباد و يارانش را در غارى حبس كرده قصد خوردنشان را دارد، اما سندباد او را كور مى كند و سوار بر كشتى از جزير مى گريزد و غول نعره زنان تخته سنگ هايى بزرگ را به سمت دريا مى افكند تا كشتى سندباد را غرق سازد. اين روايت حتى در جزئى ترين وقايعش عیناً داستان مقابلۀ اودیسه و کوکلوپسِ یک چشم است. همچنین سفر چهارم نیز بی شباهت به اودیسه نیست.

به جز اين، كليت ماجراهاى سندباد نيز بى شباهت به اوديسه نيست: سفرهای دریایی توأم با مصائب فراوان و این که شخصيت محورى، بر خلاف روال معمول قهرمان های افسانه ای، در مقابل مصائب، اراده، قدرت و حمیت خارق العاده نشان نمی دهد، بلکه پيوسته سرشار از عجز و ضعف و هراس است، یعنی خصلتى ضدقهرمان گونه دارد.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the hell did I just read?!



These were some crazy stories that don't really resemble the shiny, cleaned-up versions of the tales we hear today.
Loved it!
That's the best part of reading stuff like this - finding out how batshit things were back in the day.
So while the stories weren't particularly good, there were moments of pure hilarity that made it all worthwhile.
For example, Sinbad.



Really boring for an adventure story. Just sort of nonsensical that he keeps getting on a boat. Dude, really? How many times do you have to almost get eaten by a sea monster or a cannibal before you pack it in?
BUT.
There's this moment that stuck with me and still makes me giggle when I think about it.
So, let me set the scene a bit.
Sinbad has been on one of his wacky adventures and ends up in a faraway land, married to a chick that he likes quite a bit. Right up till she dies...and he finds out that his adopted people entomb the living spouses with the dead ones.
Yup.
They just drop the dead person down in this cave and send the living one down right behind them, with a few provisions to stave off their own death for a couple of days.
So, there sits Sinbad. Alone with a pile of dead bodies and a crust of bread or whatever.
Then all of a sudden, a beautiful woman gets plopped down the hole with him.
What luck! <--I think.
I'll bet those two fall in love and escape together! <--I think.



Turns out I was a little off in my prediction.
What actually happens is that Sinbad kills her and takes her shit.
Did not see that one coming.
To be honest, when he bludgeoned the pretty widow to death, I laughed so hard that I honked.
You just don't get heroes like this anymore in stories.
Anyway. He continues to kill all the living spouses that get shoved down into the death cave, taking their goodies until he finally finds a back door out of that place.
Unexpectedly awesome problem-solving skills there, sir.



There were quite a few hilariously brutal twists like that, and they turned what might otherwise have been a dull bucket list read into a so-bad-it's-good book.
I'm recommending you read this for those hidden gems alone. Unless, of course, that sort of thing bothers you. <--trigger warning?



Now, there are a lot of different translations and collections of these stories, and I definitely listened to one of the shorter ones.
Mine was the abridged version from Naxos Audiobooks that clocked in at 3 hrs and 43 minutes & was read by Philip Madoc.



I say that because there were only a few stories in this one.
And while I don't feel the need to track down every story, I'll probably have to find a longer version if I want to feel like I've done my due diligence with this collection.
This one had (of course) the story of the Khalifa who found his ho-wife banging a black dude and lost his damn mind. Once he starts lopping off the heads of his brides after one night (of what I'm assuming is rather awkward passion), it leads to good old Sherezade stepping up to the plate and telling the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves, and The Barber of Baghdad.
WHERE WAS ALADDIN, ANNE?! <--I'm assuming you asked.
Not in this one, that's for damn sure.



I said that to say this:
Pick your version wisely, Random Goodreader.

[JG (Introverted Reader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those 2 people who don't know, The Arabian Nights is sort of a collection of short stories told in the Arabian world, as I'm told it should be called, (which seems to include India and parts of China) waaaaaay back in the day. The framework of the story is about a sultan who caught his wife cheating on him. After he has her killed, he decides to take out his revenge on the entire sex, so he marries a different wife every day and has her killed the next morning. Scheherazade is the Grand Vizier's beautiful, intelligent daughter. She realizes that this can't go on, so she comes up with a plan. She asks to be the next wife of the sultan, and she starts telling him a story on their wedding night. But buried within that story is another story. The sultan is so intrigued by the story that he decides to let her live so he can find out how the story ends. She keeps stringing him along like this, theoretically for 1000 nights, until he relents and gives her a full pardon and takes her for his real wife. But that's only a very small part of the book. The biggest part of the book is the stories Scheherazade tells the sultan. Included are Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, and others that we've probably all heard in one form or another.

I just picked this up because I wanted to see what it was all about. This version was very readable. It was interesting to see a slice of Arabian life. I would catch myself thinking, "They treat women so badly over there" and then I would remember that when these stories were first told, women were treated badly pretty much everywhere. But then there would be some stories where the women had surprising freedom and I would catch myself wondering where things started going bad. I can't say that I know enough about the culture to comment on what's changed and what hasn't, but these stories do give you a little idea of what life is/was like in the Middle East and where they're coming from. And in these times, a little understanding can only be a good thing.

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 3 out of 5]

عالم من الحكايا و الأساطير و الأدب المبكر جدا فى تاريخنا العربى
لم اقتنع أبدا برقم ألف ليلة و ليلة فقررت أن أزيدكم من الشعر بيت

و لما كانت الليلة الثانية بعد الألف
جلس الملك شهريار يأكل الممبار
و يشاهد فيلم العار قائلا لشهرزاد أن نور الشريف لم يكن حمار
و أن روقه هي ست الدار

ثم تناول الريموت و باكو البسكوت و اتبع سياسة خدوهم بالصوت و نادى على مسرور فأتى له قائلا
صبـاح الفل فرد شهريار صباح النور و البنور يا معلم مسرور يا ملك البخور

خذ مفاتيح السيارة و انزل لأنى نسيت أن اطفىء النور و أحضر لى معك علبتي سجائر و واحده كيت كات و كيس لسان عصفور

فقال له مسرور: مولاى
لقد انفقت شهرزاد في هذا الشهر الكثير من النقود
و الفيزا ليمت لم يعد بلا حدود
و السوبر ماركت لم يعد يقبل الكريدت من البيض و لا السود

قطب شهريار حاجبيه و استدعى نائبيه و وبخهما كثيرا و سبح ربه بكرة و اصيلا
و قال لهم مات الكلام
لئن لم تأتيانى بحل لهذه المشكلة لأمرت مسرور بنحركما و أعين مكانكما إبراهيم و حسام

فقال له نائبه الأول يا مولاى كل شيء اليوم أصبح بإيه و بكام
هذا ليس زمن الكلام
هذا زمن معاك كام تساوى كام

و هنا جاءت شهرزاد حسب الميعاد و تناولت الريموت و أمرت الجميع بالسكوت
فقد جاء موعد المسلسل التركى حريم السلطان
و هي متابعة جيدة لسليمان و هويام

و بناء عليه فقد انفض الجمع الكريم
على أن يتجنب شهريار الحريم
و يروح يلعب بلاى ستيشن مع أولاده دلال و كريم

إلى أن تنهى شهرزاد المسلسل و سوبر ستار
و تنام مبكرا و تصحو من الفجر لتحضر لهم الفطار.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arabian Nights is one of the great literary works of all time but precautions need to be made if you want to read it to your kids. First off, there is a LOT of violence in the stories and a TON of sex. Don't be an idiot like me and start reading an unabridged copy to your kids or you will have to be explaining very early on why so and so killed his wife and imprisoned another...
That being said, there are few works with as much imagination and wonder in them and taken in lighter doses, it is a beautiful way of expanding your children's imaginations.
For adults, one has to take a lot of this in its historical context and try hard to put aside the misogyny which is rampant in the text. Perhaps easier said than done. But there are so many eternal stories here - Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp - that they must be read at least once to get the non-Disney-died versions (like the Anderson and Grimm fairy tales that were similarly contorted to fit mass consumption and commercialisation by Walt&Co).

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review is pointless for this book. It’s a classic and everyone should read it. Those who are complaining about how women are treated in the stories should read it more carefully and should pay attention also when it was first written.

Reading this edition, two things amazed me: how well I remember all the stories, taking into consideration that last time I read them was more than 20 years ago and second, how accurate the Romanian translation I read is compared to this one.

As for this edition, it is simply superb. Starting with the translation, the beautiful artworks inside its pages, the cover, the paper… It is a feast for eyes, senses and soul.

Loved it.

-------------------

I read 1001 Nights several times in my childhood and adolescence and loved them to pieces. I still have it in Romanian translation, 4 volumes, edition from 1959 from my grandparents. But I couldn’t resist not to buy this exquisite edition – it is absolutely gorgeous!

For many months, from now on, it will be on my nightstand to savor now and then a story from it, the beautiful artwork of the pages and the stunning illustrations.

Have a look:

[ميقات الراجحي · Rating 5 out of 5]

هذا الكتاب المجهول النسب (يُعتبر) من أشهر كتبنا العربية في ثقافتنا رغم ضعف لغته وركاكة اسلوبه وتفشي المفردة العامية فيه لكنه هو من ساهم بالتعريف ومايزال يساهم بالتعريف بالهوية الثقافية العربية الأدبية وغير الأدبية.



هذه الهوية التي باتت أحيان مكان مسبة عند الغربي من ناحية تركّز ثقافة صورة الجمل وحب النبيذ وسطوة الذكورية وإتساع الهوة بين الذكر والإنثى والكثير من الصور السيئة التي يحملها ألف ليلة وليلة لأن الغاية من تأليفه في العهد العباسي كانت تشويه صورة الخليفة العباسي دون تحديد هوية من يكون هذا الخليفة وإن كان هارون الرشيد كان صاحب الصفحات الأكثر. ثمة

كتب ترجمت للعالم من خلال نصوصنا العربية ومنها مابدأ منذ مرحلة مبكرة عن طريق دار الحكمة في عهد المأمون ومن تبعه وكذلك حركة الترجمة في العصر الأندلسي. تُرجمت مقطوعات (لنصوص جاهلية)، وترجم (رسالة الغفران) بل حتى أعتبر كتاب الإيطاليين الأول (الكوميديا الإلهية) لدانتي قد حصل على فكرته من رسالة (المعري) وفق بعض الدراسات الفرنسية والألمانية – وهذا ليس موضوعي هنا – حول هذا الكتاب وترجمت (مؤلفات فلسفية * ) عباسية وأندلسية ومغربية، ومؤلقات ونصوص منتقاة (للجاحظ)، وقصة (حي بن يقظان) التي عدت عند الفرنسيين أثناء ترجمتها رواية فلـسفية، و(كليلة ودمنة) رغم عدم نسبته للأصل العربي بعد أن فقدت أصوله الهندية والفارسية، وهذا الكتاب أي ألف ليلة وليلة مثله مثل رباعيات الخيام الفضل لأوروبا في (إعادة) اكتشافه عندما خرج في بداية القرن الثامن عشر بترجمة انجليزية سرّعت بتحقيق واخراج النسخة العربية (الأصل)..



هذا أحد الكتب التي مرت بعدة مراحل كتابية وزاد بعض النساخ وعدلت فيه بعض بدايات ونهايات وطريقة سرد بعض قصصه مثل قصص السيرة الشعبية التي تناقلها الرواة في (عنترة) و(سيف ذي يزن) و(الزير سالم) وهي لا تختلف في شعبيتها عن ألف ليلة وليلة. الفرق بينهم أن ألف ليلة وليلة يمنحك تجاه شعور بالحب والتعلق والشغف. هوية الكتاب المجهولة تؤكد قصصها أنه مزيج من :

القصص الفارسية - الأدب البهلوي Persian literature
الهندية عند إل��قاء حضارتها بالإسلامية
العربية في مراحل الخلافة العباسية عامة، وبلاد العراق – بغداد خاصة، وبلاد مصر



فهو ليس إبنًا عربيًا خالصًا. لكن نستطيع أن نقول أن الجينات العربية غلبت على بقية المنافسة وسر فحولتها يكمن في توصيف المشهد العباسي والأشعار العربية – رغم ركاكتها – المضاف إليها والأمثال والحكم العربية.

ينقل لك الكثير من ثقافات القرون الأولى وعاداتهم.. تعيش روعة الترحال والسفر والبحر والمغامرات والتشويق والقتل في قالب كوميدي أحيان والخديعة والجنس والشعر والخيانات والمكيدة والسحر والشعودة والجن والعفاريت.. كتاب خيالي روعة بكل ما تحمله الكلمة من معنى. فتنني سندباد ومغامراته وعلي بايا وعلاء الدين وقصص المغامرات.

كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة كتاب يستحق الإقتناء والقراءة أكثر من مرة وإن كنت قرأته مرتين فقط ولن أفعلها مرة أخرى لتجاوز القراءة عندي الآن سقف (ألف ليلة وليلة) وليس هذا تقليل من شأنه. ولكن كثرة الكتب التي في القائمة.

أفضل طبعة هى (برسلاو 1837م) تصحيح (مكسيميليا نوس بن هابخط) في (12 مجلد) دون أي تحريف، وطبعة (المكتبة الثقافية 4 مجلدات) ببيروت، وطبعة (دار الشعب 1969م) في (11 جزء / مجلدان) عناية رشدي صالح وهي جميعها دون تحريف.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
(*)
يزعم الناقد المغربي عبد الفتاح كيليطو أن الكوميديا الإلهية هو السبب في شهرة رسالة الغفران رغم أسبقية الثاني، أنظر لن تتكلم لغتي، دار الطليعة، بيروت، ط 1، 2002م, ص 21.

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

〽️I need to read a full version of the Arabian Nights and do a proper review. Soon. At least I've slept in the Sinai and listened to the whisper of the shifting sands as they built dunes and told stories.

[Chiara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ultima trovata della serie Inc. cool 8 (made in Crozza)

Avete presente il Tim Cook, partorito da Crozza, proprietario della famosa multinazionale? Il fratello di Setigiritin Cook. Ecco, di sicuro il fratello lavora alla BUR.
Attenzione attenzione, ecco a voi la loro ultima trovata geniale. La suddetta casa editrice ha pensato bene di prenderci tutti allegramente per il culo, spacciando un libro per qualcosa che non è. Ora: io sono abbastanza delusa, per non dire di peggio. Questo volume (bello vero? Fa proprio un figurone sui propri scaffali, ed è anche illustrato!) viene venduto come un'edizione lussuosa de Le mille e una notte, comparendo in una nuova collana piuttosto curata dal punto di vista estetico. Peccato che queste non siano le mille e una notte, no, manco per il cazzo, e nemmeno cento. E nemmeno dieci. Quello che il consumatore paga - e intendiamoci: profumatamente - è una raccolta di CINQUE (CINQUE!!!! sì, cinque misere favole) racconti tratti da Le mille e una notte, e a me la differenza pare sostanziale.
Io non mi aspetto di trovare l'edizione del tutto integrale, ok, si può comprendere: le dimensioni dell'originale sono gigantesche, l'opera è stata arricchita nel corso della storia da più "filoni", è stata rimaneggiata, e per tanto definire un'edizione "completa" risulta anche difficile, oltre che poco maneggevole dal punto di vista pratico. Ma tu me lo devi scrivere che, per Dio, mi stai vendendo 5 fiabe. Non ci puoi appiccicare lì in bella mostra un titolo quando poi stai vendendo aria fritta, cara Bur. Questo rasenta la truffa.

Quindi mia madre, convinta di farmi un bellissimo regalo, non solo ha sganciato come minimo 20 euro (non so quanto sia di preciso, ma direi per fortuna, a questo punto), ma si è dovuta anche subire la mia delusione; è ovvio che un lettore attento avrebbe fiutato la trappola contando solo 500 pagine e poco più, d'accordo. Purtroppo non tutti sono lettori attenti, e magari qualcuno, come mia madre, appunto, vuol fare un regalo. Inoltre, siccome l'infamia non era abbastanza grande, l'editore si è fatto furbo, e ha pensato: "mmm...come faccio a fare abboccare gli scemi all'amo? questi mi sgamano subito...", ed ecco la genialità, signori: "mettiamo un formato pagina più scomodo di un A4, caratteri cubitali, così facciamo più pagine; queste ultime le facciamo spesse 5 centimetri. E poi riempiamo tutto di disegni! Sì sì, faremo proprio così."
Bravi, applausi!!!
La vostra collana mi sembrava bellissima, ma ve la potete ficcare dove potete immaginare da soli.
Quando leggerò le vere Arabian nights, o almeno quando ne leggerò degli estratti che per numero si possano per lo meno contare su due mani, mi potrò pronunciare sul contenuto; per ora, non posso dire niente. Manco la cornice narrativa ci hanno messo, sti disgraziati. Sharazad? E chi è, chissenefrega, proprio.

Fatevi un favore: NON LO COMPRATE.

[Jan-Maat]

As a child I had a small selection of tales from the Arabian nights in a hardback volume with a few gorgeous full colour plates. From this a couple of stories stayed with me, a Sultan travelling in disguise meets a man who having learnt of the Sultan's weakness for baby cucumbers was intent on trying to fool him out of a fortune in exchange for them, the man although greedy is also garrulous, tells the Sultan in disguise his wicked plans enabling the Sultan to turn the tables on him and trick him and eat the cucumbers from which we learn that if one becomes a Sultan or Sultana it is of prime importance to always wander one's Sultanate in disguise to avoid being tricked and fooled by the greedy, then a story about the keys of Destiny - basically if a mysterious Sheikh turns up claiming to be your uncle and asking you to come into the desert and that your archery skills may come in handy -and even if he saves your life he probably doesn't have your best interests at heart, so don't be surprised that if he gives you a palace that it leaks and is damp and cold even in Egypt, and a story about a Sultan of Egypt who had a beautiful wife, excellent children, but none less had depression, then one day a mysterious old man who had spent so many years on mountain tops growing wise than he no longer needed to wear clothes ( ie his beard and hair had grown so long that it was wound about him to form a dense coat) wandered in to his palace and forced the Sultan to have an extremely unpleasant visionary experience which cures him of his depression although possibly in the process leaving the Sultan conditioned with anxiety about Bathhouses and donkeys .

So anyhow spotting a new translation in the Everyman series I determined to buy it - inevitably those stories were not in it. Apparently in the dim and distant past there were two story collections - the Arabian Nights and the 1000 and one nights which at one stage merged like a dream of Italo Calvino - indeed very much so as the stories became very popular in Europe through French translations, the translator spotting this, commissioned additional stories, or maybe just made up new ones to best match the taste of eighteenth century French readers.

This collection purports to get round this by drawing on medieval manuscripts, the translation preserves the frequent divisions into nights some of which are less than a page long. This breaks up the flow of the stories, but provides the reader with the sense of frustration which was meant to be experienced in the framing story.

As this version is truer to the manuscript tradition, some of the more familiar tales are missing however those given here have a certain power from their rhythm and the sense of the inevitable, that element and the attitude towards sexual adventure reminded me very strongly of Boccaccio's Decameron.

Another attraction is the sense of falling through from one story to next, as in the middle of one story a character will begin to tell a story to another character which the narrative then takes up. It is rather like If on a Winter's Night a Traveller and the effect is both disconcerting and exciting. A constant moving between narratives and framing stories all insanely nested within each other only missing an internal narrator to begin telling the story of Scheherazade to achieve a Möbius-strip narrative and for the reader to disappear without trace.

[Nazanin · Rating 1 out of 5]

صد و هفت صفحه بیشتر نتونستم بخونم
ابتدا امیدوار بودم که حکایت ها رفته رفته لابد خواندنی تر خواهند شد اما هرگز چنین نشد
شاید برای اثری مثل "هزار و یک شب" نظر سنگدلانه ای باشد ولی واقعا برای من یکی از کتاب هایی شد که اصلا و ابدا خوشم نیومد
گریزی به نیمه هایش زدم بلکه تحولی و تغییری ببینم و به هوای همان پیش بروم و مثلا زود قضاوت نکرده باشم ولی دریغ
سوژه های تکراری
پایان های عجیب و غریب
تو در تو و خسته کننده
بدون جذابیتی برای ادامه دادن
انتهای هر حکایت از خودم می پرسیدم خب که چی مثلا؟؟
و دیدم دیگه نمی تونم خودم رو راضی کنم که حواست باشه که داری هزار و یک شب می خونی و حق نداری دوستش نداشته باشی
خلاصه بدون ذره ای عذاب وجدان، قشنگ کتاب رو بستم و به همان قفسه کتاب ها سپردمش و مطمئنم تا صد سال دیگه هم سراغش نخواهم رفت

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I say in my review, I wanted to write a parody of this wonderful book but was forced to admit defeat. Burton is too damn clever for a good parody to be possible. During my preliminary negotiations, I had however received a remarkable offer from Alfonso. A Burton parody without political incorrectness is unthinkable, and Alfonso bravely put himself forward to play the role of an evil blackamoor of hideous appearance.

It seems wrong that Alfonso's selfless devotion to literature should go unrewarded. I am therefore proud to present:

A Fragment of the Tale of Rashid al-Bhattan and al-Fonso the Maghrabi

Now there dwelt not far from the Caliph's court another foreigner, a Darwaysh from the Maghrib named al-Fonso, a powerful magician and geomancer; from his earliest age upwards he had been addicted to witchcraft and had studied and practiced every manner of occult science, for which unholy lore the city of Africa is notorious. And the Maghrabi possessed a seal ring, a signet that once had graced the hand of Solomon Davids-son; yet so woven about with secret spells and enchantments was it, that the Maghrabi could not avail himself of its familiar, for all his arts. But by his gramarye, the Maghrabi learned how it stood with Rashid, and he thought himself a scheme whereby he might bend the ring to his will. And one day, as Rashid left the Caliph's court, the Maghribi thrust himself in Rashid's way; and addressing him, he asked if he would learn the infallible method to win the favour of any woman, even the highest and most beautiful.

The Maghrabi was a hideous blackamoor, ill-favoured and foul with grease and grime, and Rashid laughed to hear his words, believing that he spoke in jest. But the Maghrabi spoke kindly to Rashid and flattered him and used all his charms to put him at his ease; and presently he took forth the ring and instructed him in its use, telling him that he had but to rub it to gain aught that he might want, but that only one of the Isles of the Setting Sun might thus constrain the Spirit of the Ring; and Rashid still doubting, the Maghrabi put the ring on Rashid's finger and told him to rub it. Rashid did as the Maghrabi bade; and instantly before him appeared a Marid. He trembled at the terrible sight; but, hearing the Slave of the Ring say, "Ask whatso thou wantest, verily, I am thy thrall, seeing that the signet of my lord be upon thy finger", he took courage. "Command the Marid," said the Maghrabi, "that he transport us to the Caliph's Harim." Rashid did as the Maghrabi said; "Hearing and obeying," replied the Marid, and smote the earth, so that it clave in two; and taking the Maghrabi under one arm and Rashid under the other, he bore them to the innermost sanctum of the Harim.

"Hide thyself in this closet," said the Maghrabi to Rashid, when they were arrived. "As soon as thou dost espy one of the Caliph's concubines, command the Marid to make me in all ways pleasing to her; then shalt thou see the true power of the Ring." Rashid did as the Maghrabi said; and no sooner had he concealed himself, than entered a girl high-bosomed and pleasing of face, slender-waisted and heavy of hip, of whom one might soothly say as the poet¹

Eyes like two stars and hair as black as night
Lips ruby red caught in a winsome pucker
So fair a maid I ween ne'er crossed my sight
To look on her is aye to wish to embrace her.

She glanced with displeasure on the Maghrabi; but Rashid, heeding the magician's rede, rubbed the ring and commanded the Marid. The Maghrabi spake some words to the girl; and instantly her aspect changed, and she did with goodly gree suffer the Maghrabi, for all his hideousness, to kiss her and toy with her, and presently to disrobe her of her gold-purfled dress and even of her petticoat-trousers and know her carnally², whereby she joyed with great joyance. "Now command the Marid to take us hence," said the Maghrabi without even making the Ghusl-ablution, for he was a Kafir; and again Rashid commanded the Marid, and they made good their escape, leaving the Caliph's concubine swooned on the ground.

Notes

¹ I use Lane's somewhat anaemic translation.

² The Breslau Edition adds some details concerning the excessive size of the Maghrabi's manhood; the wording leaves it unclear whether or not this can be ascribed to the influence of the Ring.

[Dream.M · Rating 4 out of 5]

شهریار و شاه‌زمان، دو برادر و پادشاه دو سرزمین در نزدیکی هم‌ان که هر دو با خیانت همسرانشون مواجه می‌شن. شاه‌زمان سرزمینش رو ترک می‌کنه و از ناراحتی به برادرش پناه میاره. اما شهریار خشمش رو اینطور ابراز می‌کنه که اول همسر خائنش رو می‌کشه و بعد هر شب دختری باکره رو به عقد خود درمی‌اره و فردای آن روز اون رو می‌کشه.
این روند آنقدر ادامه پیدا می‌کنه که در نهایت دخترهای وزیر باقی می‌مونن. شهرزاد و دنیازاد. وزیر از اینکه جان دخترانش در خطره ترسیده اما شهرزاد که دختر بزرگتره خیال پدر رو راحت می‌کنه و از او می‌خواد به این عقد اجازه بده. شب اول توی حجله شهرزاد به شهریار می‌گه که خواهرم دنیازاد همیشه با داستان‌های من می‌خوابه. اجازه بده که به عنوان آخرین شب هم براش قصه بگم. شهریار قبول می‌کنه اما جذابیت داستان‌ها و نحوه تعریف کردن شهرزاد به قدری برای شهریار کشش داره که اون رو مجاب می‌کنه در شب‌های دیگه هم بهش فرصت داستان‌گویی بده. این قصه گفتن ها هزار و یک شب طول می‌کشه. توی این مدت شهرزاد ۳ تا پسر برای شاه دنیا میاره و آنقدر روی روحیات شهریار اثر مثبت می‌ذاره که اون از کشتن شهرزاد و بقیه دخترها منصرف میشه و دوباره به جنس زنها امیدوار میشه. :)
......
این ظاهر کتاب "هزار و یک شب" بود. درباره باطنش بقیه دوستان حرفای کاملی گفتن که خوبه بخونید.

[هدى يحيى]

------------------------------------------------
ألف ليلة وليلة
النص الأصلى -4 مجلدات في كتاب واحد

1451
صفحة
نسخة حجم صغيرر


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[nastya · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Hey, do you like The Arabian nights?
- Sure! Loved this book as a kid. My favourite story is Aladdin!
- Um, it’s not in the original text and was written by a Frenchman Antoine Galland and then it was translated into Arabic and attempted to pass as an original text.
- Hmm. Well, then Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Love it!
- Um, same thing as with Aladdin…
- Damn! Ok, I love Sinbad’s adventures! Ha!
- You see, it was a cycle of independent stories from 17-18th centuries. They are not in the original oldest Syrian manuscript we have now in the Bibliothèque Nationale.
- The hell?? What are these stories then??
- Glad you asked!
This is the world of jealous murderous husbands, horny duplicitous wives, demons and sex. the surprising amount of sex... The colorful world of magic. The world of uncountable kings. You thought romance genre’s England has too many Dukes? Ha!
I really loved the first half of the book but by the end stories became too samey. Still it’s a recommend and this book makes a very fun reading experience.

This version is by Muhsin Mahdi based on the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript that is currently in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Mahdi argued that this version is the earliest extant one (a view that is largely accepted today) and that it reflects most closely a "definitive" coherent text ancestral to all others that he believed to have existed during the Mamluk period (a view that remains contentious).

A few months later...
This book is quite extraordinary. While reading it, I am enjoying it, but I can never remember any further than the last two stories. And the spell is broken every time I close the book. They just refuse to stay in my head. I vaguely remember that there must be a prince, a sea voyage, betrayal/misfortune, some island in the middle of the sea with strange things happening on it, sometimes there's castle with virgins, and then return to Baghdad and becoming wealthy. And that's almost every story.

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Urdu,this is called Alif Laila.These are familiar stories which enthralled me in my childhood.Also adapted as countless TV episodes and movies.

Fondly recall Pakistan television's series Alif Laila from the 1980s,which though made on a shoestring budget was great fun.

King Sheharyar takes a new wife each day and executes her the next day.The beautiful Sheherzade agrees to be his wife to stop him.

She tells him a story,and then another and still another.The king is so engrossed that he does not kill her.

Who can forget Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,Aladin's Magic Lamp and Sindbad the Sailor.

Cruelty and violence is certainly a theme,but the entertainment value is very much there.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, the wonders of literature! While reading this book I could not help but sing the songs or hum the tunes associated with the tales:

♪♫♪ A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming ♪♫♪

I grew up with mostly Filipino komiks around me. Only my father loved reading books and we had very few (compared to what I have now) classics and contemporary books at home. My parents did not read to me when I was young. Those are the reasons why I missed all those children's books. So, reading these Tales from 1001 Nights a.k.a., The Arabian Nights was like going back to the komiks time in the province. You see, the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, although I read it just now, is so popular that we must all have seen it in movies, read in local adaptations as individual children's books or comics or even seen in TV ads. However, if you compare the original story to the Disney-produced movie, the carpet in the book does not fly. Rather, it just covers the distance between the entrance of the King's palace and Alladin's pavilion so that the princess, Lady Badar Al-Budur (maybe the equivalent of Princess Jasmine) will not walk on mud. The story is fantastic. I admire how the magician thinks: cunning and devious. I hate Alladin before he got rich particularly on his laziness and how he treats his old mother.

♪♫♪ A-li-ba-ba... A-li-ba-ba... ♪♫♪

I still remember the theme and my sister used to mimic it. Low key. She marches like a soldier and with eyes wide and scary. The other tale that I liked was Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves. Who would not remember ourselves shouting: Open Se-sa-me! when we saw a closed door when we were kids? Then expecting our mom or playmate to open it for us? Who says that this book treats women badly? In this tale, the maid Morgiana is so smart that she saves his master's (Ali Baba) life several times.

♪♫♪ Sinbad the Sailor
Sailing through the seas... ♪♫♪

I tried looking this up for lyrics but I think that there is a popular Hindi rock song with the same title. I remember the tune and I thought that it is similar to "Popeye the Sailor Man" or maybe as catchy as that. Well, the tale of Sinbad the Sailor is a short one and it talks about is mistake of killing his falcon. It is one of those tales inside another tale.

All of these 70+ (whew!) tales are framed into a story that Scheherazade is telling King Shahryar so that she will not be killed. The king and his brother have philandering wives who they have killed so the King does not want to have a wife anymore so he orders his vizier (assistant) to bring young pretty girls from the village and after one night of sex, the king orders his soldiers to kill the girl. To survive, the wise Scheherazade tells the 1001 tales, part-by-part. The king, so eager to know what comes next, decides not to kill her until all the tales are told.

I will not tell you if she gets eventually killed in the end.

[Shawna Finnigan · Rating 1 out of 5]

TW// cheating, rape, domestic abuse, pedophilia, murder, incest, misogyny, torture, animal abuse, animal death, suicide, ableism, bullying, slut shaming, self harm, mentions of depression

A few years back, I signed up for a course that was going to study this book. I was really looking forward to the course, but I ended up having to drop it right before the term started because of my health issues. I hung onto The Arabian Nights all this time because I thought maybe it’d be interesting. I really regret hanging onto it for this long...

The Arabian Nights is about a king who decides that women aren’t trustworthy, so to cope with this, he sleeps with a different woman each night and then kills them in the morning. A girl decides to outsmart the king. Her plan is to tell the king a series of interesting stories that end on cliffhangers so that he will want to know what comes next and will choose not to kill her.

I appreciated the history behind this book and why The Arabian Nights is important to a lot of people, but I just couldn’t look past the problematic things in this book, especially the misogyny. This book is filled with nonstop misogyny. The whole premise of this story wouldn’t take place without misogyny and almost every individual tale in this story not only hates on women but also kills them and injures them in the most gruesome ways. The misogyny isn’t even dealt with in respectful ways. The men who harm the women and hate on the women are often viewed as the heroes of the story. It’s awful. I understand that times were different when these stories first started being told, but these stories really do not hold up well with the modern times.

Besides the misogyny, I also struggled will how boring and repetitive this book was. The stories weren’t very fast paced or interesting and I often found myself struggling to stay awake while I was reading them. The whole format of this book also involved a few lines of text being repeated every "night." My edition had only 271 nights, so I only had to read these repeating lines 271 times, but I can’t even begin to imagine how annoyed I’d get with reading the same lines of text 1,001 times.

One of the few praises that I can give this book is that it’s fairly understandable for a classic. This probably has a lot to do with the translator of my edition. I’m sure other editions might be a little more confusing. The only parts of this text that I found confusing were the poems, which was no surprise that I found them confusing since I don’t really get along well with poems.

I don’t really recommend reading this book unless you enjoy reading slow paced classics. I feel like learning about the history of this story is enough. There’s really no need to read over 500 pages of nonstop misogyny.

I have one final thought on this book but it’s one that mentions sexual content, so proceed at your own risk.


I hate how this book deals with the topic of virginity. This happens in our current times, too, but it’s a nonstop theme throughout this book. Men are having sex nonstop, but women are expected to remain a virgin until marriage and men view it as a treat when women save their virginity for them. It’s gross and I hated to constantly have to read about this in The Arabian Nights.

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Story to Save a Live

The beauty of the stories and the poetry of the thought that most destructive demons can be tamed back with a few stories was fascinating to me even when I first saw the serialized version on tv. What I didn’t realized was that the stories Scheherazade, that great goddess of story tellers and inventor of cliff-hangings, told the king weren’t as random but had an order in themselves.

This book has made Scherzade my favorite superhero – superhero was the word we use for one who risk one’s life for others, don’t we? I mean we like Doctor Who for he won’t use weapons – and yet the enemies he fought weren’t in any way real. What Scherzade had to fight was real, and after centuries of her single victory continues unfortunately to remain real – lack of trust among sexes.

Sheriyar is misogyny humanized. There is another famous collection of stories called ‘Tota Maine ke kise’ from same regions (Iraq, Iran, India etc) which comprise of a parrot and she-parrot who are in love. The frame story is simple. The parrot would say mynah is sure to cheat him and would back that prediction with a story where a woman cheated on her lover. Mynah, in her turn, would say it is parrot who is sure to cheat her and will back that up with a story of how some man cheated on his lover. Then parrot would come back with another story – and this exchange of accusations will go on and on. A similar conversation takes place between Shylock’s daughter and her lover towards the end of ‘Merchant of Venice’.

Sheriyar is the result of this mistrust among sexes. In a short time, he comes across three cases of adulatory committed by three women, including one by his own wife, and generalizes to the whole of the fair sex. Remember how Hamlet concluded ‘Frailty thy…’ after seeing frailty of a single woman (his mother). A person who is suffering because he thinks he is cheated can be quite suggestible (Othello) . And a generalization can be temting.

The parrot and she-parrot were afraid of how vulnerable they are making themselves to other’s injuries. Sheriyar has developed this fear after being cheated his wife. His Black Widower’s wish, to kill his spouse the morning after marriage, is height of this mistrust.

And Sherzade is the beauty who tamed this beast. She did this – she fought away her death - the literal sword of her own father a few hours away from being forced to cut her head; with armor of a pleasant smile on her lips and the weapon of story on her tongue. And she does that. Repeatedly. For a thousand and one nights.

In the play I’ll teach the King

Not the play but through the stories (repetitive Shakespearean references are coincidental). A tyrant can’t be reasoned with directly. Same goes for a prejudiced person - prejudice is by very definition refusal to reconsider the already reached false conclusions. Now imagine prejudiced tyrants. Scherzade knew this well enough. Instead, she used her stories to make king see the truth. The change of heart, which the king admitted to on the thousand and the first night, wasn’t born all of sudden but came out of efforts of last thousand nights – over which she gradually changed the opinion of the king.

And it is the way she changed king’s opinion that I love so much. As good as the stories are in themselves, they carry a trend. One of the very first story, Scherzade told the king – was about a wicked woman, but a woman made wicked by jealousy against his husband’s new wife. May be the king understood her jealousy, maybe he didn’t.

Then you come across the story of a king, suffering from misfortune caused by an adulterous wife – a king not unlike Scheriyar, may be Scheherazade is simply saying what king would love to hear … but look carefully, and you will notice that the villain wife suddenly gets a voice. Even though she was beheaded, the wife in the story did get a say – love of an adultress woman is love still. You see what Scherzade did.

Move a little ahead and roles are reversed. Now we meet a woman who has to suffer on account of meaningless jealousy of her husband – a husband who doesn’t want her to show his face in public. Her husband is made to repent in the end. (There is a similar story towards the end, except there it is husband suffering of his wife’s jealousy.)

So now you see the trend. There is soon a story in which a king Haroon is at fault – making people suffer with his tyrannies … but he is quick to repent upon realizing the mistake – and even makes up for the loss of these people. Did you get you lesson, Sheriyar?

And so it goes on. One story actually involved a prince who has formed a bad opinion regarding all women kind from all the mischief caused by them that he read about in his books. His mother, the queen asked him to think about all the tyrant kings that the world has and what they have done to the women over centuries (I can imagine Scheherazade having her tongue in her cheek when she must have narrated the scene)

Later on, Scheherazade diverts to stories about how married women have fun at the expense of their wanna-be-lovers.

The last story is that of a woman – Ulysses and Penlope combined into one woman, who goes out on a difficult journey while maintaining her loyality to her husband against all the suitors.

Gradually, the stories change to afford a better position for women and while also reminding the king that even King can make mistakes – and how much more troublesome are their mistakes than that of an ordinary person. There are a few stories (e.g. Sindbad) where the issue of friction between sexes is not raised but the general trend is too good to miss. In fact, very first few pages you find a remark by a woman (other than Scherzade) about futility of keeping women under lock. In Aladin’s story, it is the princess who kills the bad guy (and her name is not Jasmine – Sherzade got that wrong, Disney knew better.) In Ali Baba’s story, it is a woman, avery, very clever woman who kills all the forty thieves.

While we are talking about fighting prejudice – a good reason for people to read it to observe how lightly the veil is used by women. Women, who wear vile while being out, are shown at liberty and often chose to show their face to whoever they wish to. (They often do it for the guy, even if he is a stranger, they found handsome who in turn is almost always ‘pierced’ by their beauty.) Not only that, there are a lot of night parties and extra-marital kissing. Yes, there are strict and overprotective fathers but I mean that goes everywhere. Then in at least one place, there is a remark on regarding how the judges are too strict regarding how women should behave. (It is surprising these same judges had nothing to say about drinking wine or when their king had more than four wives.) Moreover, there seems to be no way men can cheat their wives - men are permitted marry multiple times and can have sex with slaves under Islam (like other religions) but women are not - this means men can not cheat on their wives.

Celebrating the art of Storytelliing

There are a number of techniques used by the Scheherazade – cliff hangings, repetitive characters (king Haroon and his wife, Zobeida) story-within-story (at times story-within-story-within-story-within-story) etc. One time Scheherazade forgets a part of narrative and have to retreat to cover that part.

Cliff-hangings though were never that important and never that close to being figurative. Here they are saving lives – the stakes on which Scherzade bargains to get another day of life.

Regarding the story-within-story thing, you may claim that too many of the stories are told by characters trying to save lives. But look at Scheherazade, the original story teller. Isn’t she doing the same? Won’t her psychology affect her stories? And it is the most excellent part – that story-teller and the listener are both part of the story; you get most out of it when you think about how their minds are involved in and are affected by the stories. Just imagine the thoughts that Sheriyar would carry in his mind at the end of each story.

There is a criticism that some of stories are too similar – but you see it is because of the central theme. And I mean how much diversity you can wish for? There are love stories –both comedies and tragedies, stories of adventures, stories of genies, humorous stories (especially the one about tailor), criminal stories, stories of suddenly found treasures. There is one short story about the three brothers who can reason backwards – a little like Sherlock Holmes. Given its time, the stories show remarkable diversity.

In one weird story, a woman disguised as her own husband marries another woman. Latter this second woman marries husband of first. Weird enough? Wait till the two women find a crush for each other’s sons.

Antisemitism, Racism and Body Shaming

From beautiful to ugly ... There is a lot of (much more than you can imagine) antisemitism, racism and body shaming specially in first 200 or so pages, especially for a book trying to fight prejudice. All wicked wizards are African, Jew, Worshiper of fire or Hindu. All cheating merchants are Jews. It probably speaks as much about powerful men’s sexual jealousies as about slavery, that a lot of slaves were eunuchs. The filthy tradition of eunuchs was not limited to Arabia though.

Some female slaves do seem to gain independence and are lawfully married - but that is a fairy tale sort of thing. The terrible treatment of a hunch-back in particular made me stop reading it for a month.

I don’t believe in cultural, temporal or spatial relativism; so I won't defend the book. I just took away six stars from my rating. It was already twenty-nine stars.

Some advice if you chose to live in medieval Persia

1. There is nothing more risky than serving lovers’ cause or kings.

2.The most dangerous job is that Vizir – better be a slave than a vizir. Since king may take you along on a expedition (mostly in disguise); find random people or dead bodies and want you to discover the truth behind them within three, thirty or forty days; failing which your head is likely to be beheaded.

3.If a married woman seems to be answering your requests to take you as lover, than she is just kidding and is probably going to get you a lot of trouble.

4. If you suddenly found yourself in room of some person of opposite sex, than it is probably doing of some Jinn and Pari. Soon you will found yourself in love with other person but will forget to ask where the hell you are. Then early morning, you shall be thrown back to your place. And after a lot of suffering shall found your lover again.

5. If you got separated from your family, don’t worry, you shall find them after a few years healthy and happy – bringing a family reunion and happily ever after; unless Scherzade chose to give your story a sequel.

6. Have a story to tell, in case you get in trouble with king or a Jinn.

7.If two darveshes wants admittance to your house than it is probably king and his ministers, specially there are multiple sisters in the house. Admit him and tell him something strange. For, he would then make you rich.

8. You are most likely to be married to the king, if you are youngest of three sisters. Youngest of brothers are lucky too. Also in case of princes, it helps your future prospects greatly if your mother was deserted by king.

9. If you are young, poor and handsome man, than you will soon be wealthy – it just follows. If you are are a beautiful woman, than your veil is liable to flown away by wind in front of some man who will instantly fall in love with you.

10. If your husband has something old and useless lying around, don’t give it away – it is sure to be magical.

11. Password for cave is ‘open Sim-sim’.

12. Sea journeys are especially dangerous if you are single or your spouse is lost.

And above all,
13. If you found an old lamp, to rub it.

[Destiny Dawn Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

This edition is a translation of the first 271 nights from the "1001 Nights" cycle.

One of my favorite aspects of this work is the role of Shahrazad. While many people discuss that she is telling the stories to save her own life, what people fail to recognize many times is that, really, she volunteers to be placed in the position in order to save her kingdom. She's a great literary heroine--saving the world through storytelling.

It also provides a great lens into a world that today is depicted in US media as a wartorn hotbed for terrorist activity. For me it was a reminder that Bagdhad used to be a beautiful, opulent city and cultural center.

Anyone with an interest in storytelling, folklore, or the culture of Persia and the Arabian world should check out this work. Although I have no other translations for comparison, I think that this one is excellent. I found it readable, but with important words and names left untranslated. Also, Haddawy isn't afraid to describe sexual situations plainly, without overly poetic euphamisms.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really need a 2.5 stars option, though I would end up using it on three-fourths of everything. As a generic, I can neither recommend nor disavow this book.

Okay so the beloved Arabian Nights, tales from a thousand and one nights. I should start with what this is NOT. This is not a linear story about a princess telling stories to a king. This is not a children's read involving genies, magic, and cyclopi (I refuse to spell this any other way, no matter the red line beneath it). This IS a collection of stories, probably oral traditions, dating back from ancient times.

Taken on their own, many of the stories are quite fascinating. Unfortunately, as a straight through read, I quickly became bored. The stories are, with some notable exceptions, more or less the same.

"There's a beautiful girl whose eyes were like moonbeams, her lips were the color of coral, and as fresh, and she astounded with amazing astoundness all who beheld her. But she had no interest in being married, and her father the king, though he doted on her, could not accept this and so he locked her up. But on the other side of the world, there's a handsome gent whose eyes burned like saucers of the sun, his lips were sweeter than the nectar that camels walked thousands of miles to obtain and carry back, and his hair floated like all the Towers of Babylon. He, also, had no interest in being married, truly he said to HIS father the other king, "I have no interest in being married," and though his father was wroth and consulted his Wazir extensively, no plan was made. Then deus-ex-machina style, there are two omnipotent Djinnis that decide to compare the two and yadda yadda yadda. They get married." But, says the meta-princess, who is meta-telling the meta-king these stories so she doesn't get mega-decapitated, this story is not more fascinating than the other girl and guy who get screwed over, but fall in love anyway, and so on.

Congrats, you have had the Arabian Nights experience!

In short, this book, quaint translation included (he joyed with exceeding joyness!), is something that you'd have to keep by your bedside for several years. Reading one story a week, lest you get tired of it. Unfortunately it's not good enough to keep by your bedside for several years, so where does that leave it? 2.5 stars, baby.

Get from library. Read a few so you can be edumacated. Write a witty review. Have ten times more fun watching Aladdin.

Oh and I found this particular footnote moderately hilarious: "Four wives are allowed by Moslem law and for this reason. If you marry one wife she holds herself your equal, answers you and "gives herself airs"; two are always quarreling and making a hell of the house; three are "no company" and two of them always combine against the nicest to make her hours bitter. Four are company; they can quarrel and "make it up" amongst themselves, and the husband enjoys comparative peace."

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

What you thought was the Arabian Nights was more likely Richard Burton's bastardized, inflated 19th-century adaptation, which was as much about Richard Burton (and his weird ideas about sex) as it was about Arabia.

Which is sortof neither here nor there; there is no canonical version of Arabian Nights anyway. It's just an umbrella term for, basically, all of the Middle East's favorite stories. And if the version that heavily influenced guys like Borges was Burton's, isn't Burton's version the one that's a cornerstone of Western fiction? Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves is not in the original, is what I'm saying, and this is a text where the quest for an official version is in some ways doomed and pointless.

But that doesn't stop me from being all twitchy about it, because I'm an obsessive dork; I wanted to get as close as I could to the original, canonical Arabian Nights. And here it is: Husain Haddawy has gone back to the oldest surviving version, from 14th-century Syria. It is filthy.

Lots of fucking, is what these stories have. It's all very Decameron. And they're great! Extremely convoluted: frequently Shahrazad will tell a story in which someone else tells a story about a third guy telling a story, so you're all wrapped up in multiple layers of story, which isn't really as confusing as it sounds. Well, sometimes it's a little confusing. But it's always, always entertaining. There are no misses in this book at all.

Haddawy's translation is good, except for his poetry, of which there's quite a bit; for all I know the original poetry was itself terrible, but it seems more likely that it's Haddawy's fault. I ended up skimming or outright skipping all the verse; it's usually not plot-related and it's never any good.

This is one of the most important books ever written, despite its not really being a book and also not exactly having been written, and it's incredibly fun stuff. Get psyched: this is the shit.

[bookstories_travels&#x1fa90; · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tengo varias (muchas) asignaturas pendientes en cuanto a libros por leer y “Las Mil y Una Noches” es una de ellas. Tengo una edición completa de esta obra en dos tomos enormes, que es de los años 70 u 80 y que fue editada por el emblemático Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, con ilustraciones a color y publicada por el círculo de lectores. Pero nunca me he animado a leerla por pura pereza, ya que ambos volúmenes son muy grandes. Así que sacio el mono por conocer estas historias leyendo alguna que otra recopilación de estos cuentos. Por lo que cuando RBA sacó este libro como el primero de su colección Historias Maravillosas, no dude en hacerme con él. El sello saca series muy bonitas y muy bien cuidadas, y esta no es la excepción. Por lo que he bicheado me parece que va a ser una colección preciosa y muy bien cuidada. Si por mi fuera, la haría entera, pero me falta espacio y dinero. Así que me conformaré con coger algún que otro fascículo.

Desde luego, la edición es una maravilla. Cada una de las historias viene acompañadas por una ilustración a color y jalonada por otras en blanco y negro, con un fuerte sabor orientalista al estilo modernista. Cada cuento se inicia con un íncipit de estilo medieval, a modo de guiño a los manuscritos antiguos donde por primera vez aparecieron estas historias. Es una edición muy cuidada y bonita, con una portada realmente preciosa y vintage con detalles en oro, y una traducción también muy cuidada y con un fuerte sabor añejo que ayudan al lector a sumergirse en este mundo de esencias, magia, agua, amores, locuras y desiertos . La única pega es que el tamaño me ha parecido un poco pequeño, un pelin más grande creo que la edición hubiera lucido más.

El tomo recoge siete de las muchas historias que hay en está recopilación. El libro sigue la edición que en 1898 preparó el folklorista británico Andrew Lang, la cual estaba enfocadas al público infantil. Lo cual no impide que nos encontremos con unas historias un tanto oscuras, en las que hay engaños, sensualidad, sangre, asesinatos y canibalismo. No son versiones Disney, desde luego, y eso puede chocar para aquellos que conozcan la versión de Aladdin que hizo la compañía del ratón (Y que, como podemos ver si leemos este volumen, difiere en muchos aspectos del original). Pero no dejan de ser legibles para el público más joven, adaptando todo lo posible el material original. El cual está plagado de gore, sexo y engaños, por lo que paradójicamente estos relatos no son una lectura apta para los más pequeños pese a que sean conocidos como parte de ese tipo de literatura.

Volviendo a la antología propiamente dicha, RBA ha sido muy inteligente a la hora de preparar esta edición. Por un lado al iniciarla con un capitulo introductorio en el que se plasma el famosísimo hilo conductor de la recopilación: como la inteligente Sherezade accede a casarse con el enloquecido sultán Shahrirar , quien cada día se desposa con una muchacha a la que manda ejecutar al amanecer siguiente. Para no ser una más en esa cuenta sangrienta, Sherezade se las ingenia cada noche para narrar un cuento que capta la atención del sultán, parando de contar cuando se encuentra en su punto interesante, un cliffhanger que la obliga a seguir la narración la noche siguiente , aplazando astutamente su sentencia un día más.

Y lo que sigue son siete historias muy variadas en contenido y continente. Una buena muestra de todo lo que es y todo lo que podemos encontrar en “Las Mil y Una Noches” como, por ejemplo, narraciones herederas del carácter oral de esta recopilación en sus orígenes . Así podemos verlo en “La Historia del Mercader y el Genio” una autentica muñeca matriusksa literaria en la que un cuento contiene otros dos y un tercero que se deja a imaginación del propio lector, haciéndole participe de la propia historia poniendo a prueba su capacidad imaginativa. Esta tradición oral también se puede ver en la historia más extensa, una de las más populares, que es la que cuenta los siete viajes de Simbad el marino. Dicha narración está dentro del género de viajes y de la literatura fantástica. Cada uno de los siete viajes del célebre marinero está plagado de aventuras que dejan sin aliento y de circunstancias adversas, de las cuales Simbad sale exitosamente gracias a su astucia. Hace mucho que las leí por primera vez, pero me ha sorprendido recordar lo mucho que me ha evocado a las aventuras de Ulises en “La Odisea”. Y también por la forma en que los dos héroes, cuyo mayor enemigo son sus propias ansias de viajar y descubrir más cosas, se enfrentan los problemas y logran volver a casa.

Me hizo especial ilusión encontrarme en la recopilación una de mis historias favoritas, llamada aquí “La Historia de Dos Hermanas que Estaban Celosas de su Hermana Pequeña”. En esta narración, plagada de traiciones familiares, magia, aventuras y objetos sobrenaturales, Conocemos a una personaje principal femenino inteligente y seguro de sí misma, con una personalidad muy matizada y capaz de superar por sí misma cualquier dificultad y salvar a sus hermanos. Una heroína que contrasta con la protagonista de “Nuredín y la Bella Persa”. En este cuento es donde más se nota el paso de los años desde que la antología fue escrita, allá por los siglos VIII y XIV. Y es que la bella persa es víctima de los prejuicios religiosos y el sistema patriarcal musulmán, donde se ve la poca importancia que las mujeres podían llegar a tener, socialmente, ya que nuestra protagonista es una esclava que no duda en venderse asimismo para salvar a su marido de la banca rota. Una muestra de cómo se veían las propias mujeres en la época y en la cultura islámica (aunque tampoco se puede decir que en occidente las cosas fueran mucho mejor, todo hay que decirlo). Esta historia puede resultar un tanto chocante al lector moderno, y la forma en que es manejado, el personaje femenino puede opacar su vertiente satírica y la forma en que puede encuadrarse dentro del género de la picaresca.

Y hablando de pícaros, si hay uno que es popular en el mundo entero, es el protagonista del cuento más famoso de “Las Mil y Una Noches” , “Aladdin”. Como ya os dije antes, aquí encontramos la versión original, que se encuentra ambientada en la antigua China y que nos presenta a un personaje que muchas ve es es muy poco ortodoxo y sinvergüenza, muy alejado de aquel que cantaba por las calles de Agrabah en la película de Disney. Antes os hablaba de lo bien hecha que estaba la traducción del volumen. La única pega que puedo ponerle en este aspecto es que en esta historia se nos dice en un principio que está ambientada en Persia, para posteriormente rectificar y decir que se encuentra ubicada en China. Y para acabar, el libro se cierra con las historias de “El Jorobadito” y “La Historia del Quinto Hijo del Barbero”. Dos historias conectadas entre sí y que se basan en las coincidencias y en los absurdos para convertirse en relatos muy humorísticos y llenos de sabor, personajes desternillantes y situaciones que deberían ser dramáticas, pero que despiertan la sonrisa al lector. Y de las cuales se pueden sacar una moraleja que a día de hoy siguen teniendo toda su fuerza.

En definitiva, una lectura que he disfrutado mucho. En parte, creo que esto se debe a que he ido poco a poco con ella, compaginándolo con otras más densas. Gracias a esta lentitud he podido saborear cada uno de los cuentos, incluso, aunque conociera la inmensa mayoría de ellos. Eso no ha sido problema, ya que el encanto de esta antología y de la edición de Historias Maravillosas me han conquistado totalmente. Son historias que tienen algo que las hace envejecer muy bien y que atrapan al lector, quizás lo diferentes que son los originales respecto a las ideas que el público tiene de ellas en la actualidad. Creo que en la colección van a sacar un segundo tomo con más historias, sacadas también de las “Las Mil y Una Noches” . Espero que sea una de las entregas de las que pueda adquirir.

[Ana Mardoll · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Arabian Nights / 0-486-22289-6

I'm a bit of an "Thousand Nights" enthusiast -- I enjoy the stories immensely and I have four separate translations in my personal library. Several friends have asked me to discuss the differences between the editions, so I thought I'd present a four-way comparison and then talk about which version is best for which audience.

For the purposes of the four-way comparison, I will draw text from the opening tale of the two kingly brothers in order to highlight how each popular version handles "adult" content and racial content.

-- The Tale of King Shahryar and of his Brother, King Shahzaman --
Now there were in the King's palace certain windows that looked on to the garden, and, as King Shahzaman leaned there and looked out, the door of the palace opened and twenty women slaves with twenty men slaves came from it; and the wife of the King, his brother, was among them and walked there in all her bright beauty. When they came to the pool of a fountain they all undressed and mingled one with another. Suddenly, on the King's wife crying: 'O Masud! Ya Masud!', a gigantic negro ran towards her, embraced her, and, turning her upon her back, enjoyed her. At this signal, all the other men slaves did the same with the women and they continued thus a long while, not ceasing their kisses and embraces and goings in and the like until the approach of dawn.
-- Madrus & Mathers edition


-- The Tale of King Shahriar and of his Brother, King Shahzenan --
One day, Shahriar had started on a great hunting match, about two days' journey from his capital; but Shahzenan, pleading ill health, was left behind. He shut himself up in his apartment, and sat down at a window that looked into the garden. Suddenly a secret gate of the palace opened, and there came out of it twenty women, in the midst of whom walked the Sultaness. The persons who accompanied the Sultaness threw off their veils and long robes, and Shahzenan was greatly surprised when he saw that ten of them were black slaves, each of whom chose a female companion. The Sultaness clapped her hands, and called: "Masoud, Masoud!" and immediately a black came running to her; and they all remained conversing familiarly together.
-- Muhsin al-Musawi edition


-- The Tale of King Schahriar and of his Brother, King Schahzeman --
Now the Sultan Schahriar had a wife whom he loved more than all the world, and his greatest happiness was to surround her with splendour, and to give her the finest dresses and the most beautiful jewels. It was therefore with the deepest shame and sorrow that he accidentally discovered, after several years, that she had deceived him completely, and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt himself obliged to carry out the law of the land, and order the grand-vizir to put her to death.
-- Lang edition


-- The Tale of King Shahryar and of his Brother, King Shah Zaman --
Thereupon Shah Zaman drew back from the window, but he kept the bevy in sight espying them from a place whence he could not be espied. They walked under the very lattice and advanced a little way into the garden till they came to a jetting fountain amiddlemost a great basin of water; then they stripped off their clothes and behold, ten of them were women, concubines of the King, and the other ten were white slaves. Then they all paired off, each with each: but the Queen, who was left alone, presently cried out in a loud voice, "Here to me, O my lord Saeed!" and then sprang with a drop leap from one of the trees a big slobbering blackamoor with rolling eyes which showed the whites, a truly hideous sight. He walked boldly up to her and threw his arms round her neck while she embraced him as warmly; then he bussed her and winding his legs round hers, as a button loop clasps a button, he threw her and enjoyed her.
-- Burton edition

-------

For my money, the superior volume by far is the Madrus & Mathers edition. The editor and translator have deliberately worked the translation to be as readable to the English eye as possible, even making judicious choices about where to refrain from using diacritical points (single quote sound points, as in 'ain) in order to ease the reading experience. They've made a concerted effort to retain the adult content without being lewd, the racial content without descending into offensive caricature, the poetic content without overwhelming the reader, and the entire content without condensing the text and losing material. The Madrus & Mathers editions comprise four giant volumes, but the casual enthusiast will be more than satisfied with just volume one, and with over 600 pages of stories in the electronic edition, the reader will have plenty of reading material available.

For children, however, the superior volume is probably the Muhsin al-Musawi edition. This edition is condensed, but the editing was done with great care to maintain story structure and content. The adult content has been toned down considerably, the racial content has been handled tactfully, the extra songs and poems have been almost entirely removed, and there are interesting and attractive pictures in the electronic edition. My biggest complain here is that the adult content has been excised to a degree that almost brings unfortunate implications: when adultery is characterized as "conversing", the angry and jilted husband seems to be seriously over-reacting. Still, if you want a sanitized version of the tales, the al-Musawi edition is almost certainly the way to go.

I do not recommend the Lang edition. Lang's fairy tale collections, such as the color fairy tale books, are usually a delight, but his Arabian Nights edition is thin on content and heavily paraphrased. The stories are gutted to remove the adult content and shorten the tale length for children, but in many cases the changes are not carefully glossed over, and huge plot holes and unresolved threads are left dangling. I've never met a Lang reader who didn't ask me what was going on in one tale or other because the translation is so poorly rendered.

Neither do I recommend the Burton version. If anything, the Burton version has the exact opposite problems as the Lang version: Burton's edition lengthens the stories with extensively lewd descriptions and offensive racial imagery. The edition was also rendered in the 1800s, and the language within has not aged well -- there are all lot of "forsooth"s and "verily"s that bog down the reading. If you're interested in a historical analysis of how these tales have been rendered over the years, by all means become familiar with the Burton version, but if you're just looking for light bedtime reading, give the Burton edition a pass.

I hope that this comparison will be helpful. This particular listing here is for the Lang edition which I really cannot recommend.

~ Ana Mardoll

[Dmitry Berkut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why This Book Exists: Antoine Galland and the Arabian Nights

This mass-market English edition belongs to the tradition that begins not in Arabic manuscripts but with Galland’s French rewriting. Antoine Galland was a serious man. Antiquarian to the king, an orientalist, a scholar of Arabic and Persian with a solid reputation. When he received a manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights in the early 1700s, he probably assumed he'd be doing translation work. Taking a text in one language and rendering it in another, preserving meaning and, where possible, beauty. Standard work for a conscientious intellectual.
He didn't think he'd become a co-author and editor. Or, in a sense, the inventor of the East that Europe would read for the next three hundred years.
The problem began immediately. The manuscript Galland received was incomplete. About two hundred tales. Hardly a thousand and one nights. The text barely held together: stories began without introduction and broke off without resolution. Character names shifted from version to version. Narrators forgot details, confused plots, and returned to the same story with completely different variants.
This wasn't a book. It was an archive of oral tradition. Chaotic, fluid, fundamentally unfinished.
But Galland was a man of his time – an age of order and systematization. Chaos didn't suit him, and he set to work.

The first volume appeared four years later under the title Les Mille et Une Nuits. Europe went wild. Readers demanded more. Publishers knocked on Galland's door with the persistence of a vizier. Galland promises. Galland searches for material. Galland discovers there's catastrophically little of it. Over the following years, releasing volume after volume, Galland finds himself in a situation oral tradition is fundamentally unprepared for: he has a deadline. The public is waiting. The market is demanding. The Thousand and One Nights stops being an infinite process and starts behaving like a book series.
There's a beautiful legend that outraged readers, driven to despair by cliffhangers, threw stones through Galland's windows demanding he continue. It's a striking story, but unlikely. Reality was far more prosaic: Galland needed new stories because translating The Thousand and One Nights had become his source of income and his way back into public life.

Galland begins to improvise: he searches for new manuscripts, questions travelers. At some point he gets incredibly lucky: through Paul Lucas, a French traveler and antiquarian, Galland learns of Hanna Diyab, a Syrian Christian who knows stories that don't exist in any known manuscript. Lucas had brought him from the Middle East and introduced him to Parisian scholarly circles. Galland invites Diyab over, listens and records his fragmentary tales – and that's where their collaboration ends. Diyab leaves, and Galland sits down at his desk to edit.

Hanna Diyab narrated orally – with digressions, repetitions, and that natural looseness characteristic of living speech. Galland, however, is preparing text for print: he constructs plot, removes excess, adds what's missing, adjusts the morals, smooths the rough edges.

The story of Aladdin, canonical in the West today, was recorded from Hanna Diyab's telling. It's a story not about adventure but about gesture: rub the lamp, speak the word, instantly get results – a fairy tale structured like a perfectly functioning algorithm of desire. The tale of Ali Baba is the same. The forty thieves matter here not as characters but as number and structure: a cave with a password, a body count, the mechanics of access and punishment – violence brought to order. Neither story existed in the written Arabic tradition. Both entered The Thousand and One Nights through a Syrian storyteller's oral account, through a French orientalist's recording hand, through editorial revision, through the printing press.

Who's the author here? Hanna Diyab, who told the stories? Galland, who recorded and reworked them? The unknown Arab from whom Diyab in turn once heard these tales? Or the market, dictating demand? Authorship blurs and becomes collective, which is perfectly natural for oral tradition. Except now this tradition operates not in a Cairo bazaar but in the publishing industry of Paris.

Galland does with the text what any self-respecting translator of his time would do: he imposes order. Where a story threatens to fall apart, he builds a plot with beginning, middle, and end. Where a hero is merely a plot function, he creates character, provides motivation. Where a story simply happens, he finds a moral, draws an instructive meaning, adds a civilizing message.

He doesn't consider this deception or falsification. He's simply doing what he believes a text should do: be comprehensible, complete, and edifying. The Thousand and One Nights acquires something it never had before – authorial intention, belonging not to the tale itself but to whoever stands above it.

And what was there before, before Galland's narrative?

Before there was Scheherazade, and her task was entirely different. She didn't tell stories for art's sake, or beauty's sake, or morality's sake. She told stories so she wouldn't die. Each night a new story began, each morning brought a postponed execution, and the tale broke off at the most interesting point so the king would want to hear more. Thus another night passed, another story, another day of life.

But if her task were only to hold attention, Scheherazade would have been trapped in that snare forever – in eternal night, in endless narrative, where death is merely postponed but never cancelled. She had a second, more ambitious goal: to cure the king.

And the king was sick – not metaphorically but literally. Having discovered his wife's betrayal, he descended into madness that destroyed not only himself but the entire state. He made an oath: each night a new woman, each morning an execution. This wasn't private psychosis or family drama but political catastrophe. The state was losing its future with each body, the marriage order was collapsing, succession was interrupted, the country was disintegrating.

Scheherazade's stories here were not literature but emergency, desperate therapy. Narrative became a form of resistance – not aesthetics but a way to survive. These stories didn't require psychological depth, completion, or stylistic elegance. Their logic was simple and brutal: hold attention, postpone the sentence, slowly, night by night, change the listener. They weren't counting on eternity. In the Arab world they were treated accordingly – as low, street literature, too alive and too flexible to be considered respectable.

And then Galland appeared. He gave these stories the status of literature, and thereby removed them from the situation in which they were necessary. Process became product, therapy became reading material, survival became literary plot.

In this sense Galland turned out to be not an exception but a pioneer. He created the model by which The Thousand and One Nights continues to be read: not as a stable text but as a series of authorial versions, each pretending to be a translation.
Borges would later note this with his characteristic irony: the great translations of The Thousand and One Nights were always forms of appropriation. Translators didn't transmit the text – they recreated it, each in their own way. There's no original to return to here. There's only a succession of editorial decisions, each claiming authenticity.

Thus Aladdin and Ali Baba become fixed in the European canon – stories that were never "literature" in the European sense. Galland records them, reworks them, supplements them, and publishes them. He transforms open tradition into closed work. Living process becomes a book with table of contents and page numbers.

For the European reader, The Thousand and One Nights becomes above all an entrance to a fantastic East. A space of treasures, genies, magic lamps, flying carpets, and incredible splendor. This East is attractive not for specific stories but for the very possibility of an imagined journey to another world. The East here is neither interlocutor nor subject. It's material from which the European reader assembles fantasies about a beautiful and exotic Other.

And here's where the strangeness emerges: the definitive "classical" image of the East is formed not in Damascus, not in Baghdad, not in Cairo, but in Paris – in the translator's work.

After Galland, the East begins to be read as a novel – with psychology, motivation, characters' inner lives, with the notion of literature as a means of educating the reader. Scheherazade transforms from a woman desperately saving her life through stories into a symbol of Literature with a capital L – not of survival but of mission, not of postponement but of the search for meaning. Even more paradoxically, it's precisely through The Thousand and One Nights that European literature relearns how to speak about everyday life. About merchants and artisans, tailors and fishermen, ordinary people rather than heroes and kings. The Eastern fairy tale becomes a school of realism, preparing the ground for that interest in the mundane that would later become the norm with Dickens and his contemporaries.

The Thousand and One Nights begins to be perceived as world literature precisely when it ceases to be what it originally was. From an instrument of salvation it becomes a cultural monument. From a living, changing process – into a text with table of contents. From the nocturnal therapy of a mad ruler – into comfortable reading on the sofa.
One could say Galland distorted it. One could say he invented it. Most likely both statements are true simultaneously.

He didn't simply translate The Thousand and One Nights – he made it readable as a book. And Europe, breathing a sigh of relief, decided: yes, this is exactly what the East looks like. At that moment the translator's power became especially visible.

As for Scheherazade, if she could, she'd probably just smile. Her stories were never meant for eternity. One night was enough for them – just enough to push death back one more sunrise.

[V.D. Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you want to understand a culture, just read its fairy tales."

The Arabian Nights is a mesmerizing journey through countless stories, each carrying a lesson, a hidden wisdom, or a fascinating philosophical reflection. Many of these tales have been passed down for over a thousand years, evolving with each retelling but always retaining their magic.

The entire collection is framed by the story of the clever and resourceful Scheherazade, who must weave one captivating tale after another for 1,001 nights to keep herself alive. She tells these stories to King Shahryar, a ruler whose heart has been hardened by betrayal. His pain has led him to adopt a cruel ritual—marrying a new woman each night only to execute her the next morning, believing this will protect him from further heartbreak. Scheherazade, however, takes a different approach. She understands that stories have the power to heal, to challenge perspectives, and to rebuild trust.

This dynamic reminded me of a passage from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs... he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case.”

Twain's satirical take on history perfectly captures the absurdity of Shahryar’s actions, though The Arabian Nights offers something deeper—a meditation on the power of stories to challenge the most rigid minds.

As I made my way through the tales, I immediately recognized some of the more famous ones, though they were often quite different from the versions I had seen in movies and animations. I won’t spoil which ones, but let’s just say that Disney definitely took some liberties. The original stories are far richer, often darker, and filled with unexpected twists.

I’d definitely recommend The Arabian Nights, especially if you love fairy tales or have an interest in Middle Eastern culture and folklore. However, this isn’t the kind of book you rush through. It’s best read slowly—perhaps ten stories a day—so you can truly absorb the magic and avoid getting overwhelmed. There’s something timeless about these tales, and whether you’re reading them for the first time or returning to them after years, they always have something new to offer.🫶

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am planning to read through this whole book someday, I swear. But it's going to be a slow process. Here, in list form, are the reasons I may or may not finish The Arabian Nights.

Reasons I May Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-Scheherazade (or whichever of the twenty ways to spell her name you prefer) is kind of a badass genius. Since her father is the king's vizier, she gets exempted from said batshit crazy king's plan to marry and then kill every single available virgin in the city. But she volunteers for the job anyway, based purely on her plan to keep telling the king stories until he decides she's much too interesting to kill.
-Her method of telling the stories is really complicated and interesting. She starts a story in which a man with some unsolvable problem attempts to solve it. He meets three other men. They then meet a djin. The men all tell stories to the djin. The djin tells stories. They tell a story in which a person meets another person, and tells them stories. The whole book is like some kind of reverse Jenga game: she keeps piling stories on top of stories and we can't help but be baffled that she even manages to keep them all straight in her head, much less prevent them from collapsing around her.
-It's pretty dirty. There's lots of orgies and naked slave girls running around, and since Scheherazade's sister sleeps in her bedroom and is there when the king visits her every night, I got the sense that there were some kinky three-ways going on before Story Time started.

Reasons I May Not Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-It's racist and misongynist to a level I have never experienced before (and I've read Stephenie Meyer and Ian Fleming, so I know misongyny when I see it). Here's an example: so, the king finds out that his wife has been cheating on him, and with a black slave, no less. Not only that, most of the cheating women (and it is always the women who sleep around) in the book are found ravenously sexing up black men. It's at this point that we break for a lovely footnote by the translator that explains how black men, owing to their insanely massive genitalia, are the paramour of choice for cheating wives. He adds that several men he knows will not allow their wives to visit Africa with them, since the danger of their being seduced by a well-hung Negro is just too high. I am not making any of this up.
-The book is ridiculously long. Did I mention that already?