The Arabian Nights

by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Editor), Husain Haddawy (Translator), Muhsin Mahdi (Original Translator)

"Contexts" presents three of the oldest witnesses to The Arabian Nights in the Arabic tradition, together in English for the first time: an anonymous ninth-century fragment, Al Mas'udi's Muruj al-Dhahab, and Ibn al-Nadim's The Fihrist. Also included are three related works by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, and Taha Husayn.

"Criticism" collects eleven wide-ranging essays on The Arabian Nights' central themes by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Josef Horovitz, Jorge Luis Borges, Francesco Gabrieli, Mia Irene Gerhardt, Tzvetan Todorov, Andras Hamori, Heinz Grotzfield, Jerome W. Clinton, Abdelfattah Kilito, and David Pinault.

A Chronology of The Arabian Nights and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Fantasy, Literature, Short Stories, School, Mythology

523 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2009

About the author

Daniel Heller-Roazen is the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature and the Council of the Humanities. He is the author of The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations; The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation (2007), which was awarded the Modern Language Association's 2008 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature Studies; Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language (2005); and Fortune's Faces: The Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of Contingency (2003). These books have been translated or are forthcoming in translation in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. He has also edited the Norton Critical Edition of The Arabian Nights and has edited, translated and introduced Giorgio Agamben's Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (1999). Before joining the Princeton faculty in 2000, he studied philosophy and literature in Toronto, Baltimore, Venice and Paris (BA in Philosophy, University of Toronto; MA in German and PhD in Comparative Literature, Johns Hopkins University). He has received fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He teaches courses on classical and medieval literature, aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this translation of Arabian Nights and surprised myself by actually finishing it. The context readings which are a great feature of Norton editions were worth reading too. The Edgar Allan Poe version of a "1002nd night" was clearly written under the influence of some weird 19th century drug (laudanum, anyone?) and Jorge Luis Borges' account of the history of translations of the work was also entertaining, especially when he describes the consummate British "Arabist" who cleaned up the stories removing anything slightly prurient which left him with not very much material, unsurprisingly.

Scherezade was a courageous woman: not sure how many ladies would willingly marry a king that summarily executed wife after wife post-consummation. She was crafty too: escaping death with her amazing storytelling prowess. And alot of her tales were not really kid's stuff, either. Kings and poor tailors alike seem to find amazing ways of spying on their wives (usually by aid of the ubiquitous "demon"). Said wives are inevitably coupling with white and black slaves in their absence and then they just have to cut the wives into little pieces and put them in a basket and throw it in the sea: but it's not all dark ... there are also mermaid ladies who come to walk on land and enchant kings and some toilet humor also: literally in the form of a demon who hides in the proverbial throne waiting for his prey and then successively changes into a cat, a donkey, a boa constrictor, and something else. Poor guy just wanted to use the john.

[pj · Rating 2 out of 5]

you know when you’re telling a friend a story and it ends up being like 4 stories in one and you sort of forget what you were trying to say in the first place?

yeah, that’s what shahrazad did and it was so hard to follow my head hurts

[Seth Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly I picked this one up because it had a few different stories than my other copy (which was lacking the voyages of Sindbad entirely) but the translation feels too direct. It’s more stilted and harder to get through even if accurate. The stories themselves are still great

[Julia Marrinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0/5. Pretty fire.

[Leib Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review
Arabian Nights: WW Norton Critical Edition
3/5 stars
"Corny, overwrought prose at the front; Expatiative commentary at the back"
*******
Fiction books are less than 5% of all of my reading, but this is a book that has been in print in one form or another for over a millennium. Naturally, I had to figure out what all the fuss was about.

It's not exactly much ado about nothing, but it is much ado about very little--and the actual commentary/criticism on the fiction is 2/3 as long as the book itself. (The book starts with a preface of about 14 pages, and then the story is 350 pages. The commentary goes on from 354 to 521.)

The commentary is just entirely(!) too(!) wordy(!) to make it through. And, other than people who are literary majors of some type, who really cares about the series of steps involved in the creation of this book that is not a book?
*******
One thing I come up with is that Middle Easterners / Arabs really DO NOT like black people.

EVERY TIME they show up in this book, they are portrayed in a negative way. (And this is from the first page. To define a woman as debauched because her lover was black.)

They're always slaves, or linked to some type of sexual immorality.

-(p.63) "The king lowered his voice, stammered, and, simulating the accent of black people, said..."

-(p.7) "But then the 10 black slaves mounted the 10 girls, while the lady called "Massoud Massoud!" And a black slave jumped from the tree to the ground, rushed her, and, raising her legs, went between her thighs and made love to her."

In other cases (p.139), being black is part of a curse or a punishment. (It wasn't bad enough for the people who were cursed to be turned into a couple of bitches. They had to be turned into *black* bitches.) "Here they are, these two black bitches...... If you disobey my command, I will turn you into a bitch like them. I tried to give them every night 300 blows with the rod, as a punishment for what they did."
*******
There are questions about where exactly this book was written, and I would have to say that it didn't start out in the Arab world.

There's alcohol and illicit screwing on every other page of this book. Not what I expect from Arab Muslims. (But then, we have to remember that alcohol was not always illegal and the Wahhabis did not always run the Arabian peninsula.)

What's also missing is that: when Arabs take some place or capture something, they are known to take the women and children of either sex for sexual purposes. That is not found here and it may have been bowdlerized for Western sensitivities.

Or maybe it wasn't written by Arabs.
*******
A lot of stuff here just doesn't make good sense. (And that is some of the way that you know this book was reinterpreted at least once.)

"The Christian Broker's Tale" goes into China and reinterprets it in terms of The Middle East. Dhimmis and all.

These things have *never* been part of the Chinese conceptual space.

Quite a bit of quotation of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, but: how would Arabs or Persians or Indians (all of whom are thought to have made some contribution to this) have known these things?
*******

Of the book:

-It was not originally written in Arabic.

-Nobody knows what first language it was written in (first it was thought to be Arabic, then Farsi), and some people have even speculated Sanskrit--it is set in India.

-It was edited over and over and over again without actually ever having been authored, and "it grew to its present form through a process closer to sedimentation than creation."

-There are not 1001 stories, contrary to popular belief. More like about 271.

-The stories don't finish at night, and they may go on for several nights and the literary technique is called "enjambment."

Of the writing: I have to imagine that maybe it loses something in translation, but I have to say that the prose is so...... corny and... overwrought.

--It seems like every other person has "lips like rubies"  or a "face like the moon" or " teeth like pearls." These children of kings are just so beautiful and smart you'd almost think that they didn't even have to ever tend to toilet functions.
--Their descriptions of the men are homoerotic. ("Beautiful as the full moon, with a slender figure and a sweet smile"?)

-The process of this book writing itself took place over more than 1,000 years, with the oldest surviving fragments being 850 CE

******
Notes:

1. The movie "Weekend at Bernie's" is actually a retelling of "The Hunchbacks Tale."

2. "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves" and "Aladdin" seem to be missing from this edition. (I could guess what they would sound like if they follow a similar literary style.)

3. "Sinbad the Sailor" does not follow the technique of enjambment.

Verdict: The stories are just okay, but I don't recommend this version because the commentary is too much. I'd be willing to invest about 50 pages in the reading some discussion about the formation of this story. NOT 2000.

Recommended at the price of about $3.

Quotes:

(p.124) Better for me to meet and see you not, for if the eye sees nought, the heart grieves not.

Vocabulary:

ragout
cabochon
dappled

[Mark Hennion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arabian Nights
كِتَاب أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة‎‎
It is difficult to think of a text more misunderstood or culturally misappropriated than The Arabian Nights. The very name is a bastardization of W. E. Lane’s even more absurd title, Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, a “retranslation” of the text, thus provoking a teeming collection of questions as to the authenticity, original authorship, and intent of this collection (Haddaway ix). In fact, the cultural endurance of Arabian Nights may reside with retellings of this fascinating tome. Disney’s Aladdin heavily draws upon cherry picked details from 1001 Nights, and yet, the tale of Aladdin and the lamp is apocryphal, the creative input of Antoine Galland recasting a narrative he brought back from the Middle East. The origins of the best-known stories from Arabian Nights (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad) also too originated with this translation, provoking the question: well, what DO we know about the text?
The book’s place in Western culture aside, there is little refutation of the consensus that the most “authentic” version of The Arabian Nights is the 14th century manuscript shipped from Syria to France at the behest of Antoine Galland. As the oldest complete text, this common wellspring has been translated by many and could be thought of much like the Muratorian Fragment: as the earliest complete text, it sets the “canon” of the tales. Apocryphal texts like the ones mentioned above may draw a cultural inspiration from oral storytelling, and yet, without any decisive scholarship a consensus of what is to be considered would suffer. References to the story’s frame story of King Shahryar and Queen Shahrazad are indeed found in earlier texts, as referenced in the Norton Critical Edition’s Preface to the text. It is precisely this frame story that provides the architecture for Western imagination to fathom the depths of such an “alien” culture, a confrontation with the “other” in a setting rich with Islamic, Indian, and non-Christian sensibilities, mores, and values.
Historians may disagree on many points regarding The Arabian Nights, but the scholarship does concede that the references to historical persons and locations within the text is not chronologically feasible. Ja’far al-Barmaki (a name/role later appropriated to create the villain in Disney’s Aladdin) did indeed live during the reign of Harun al-Rashid, providing a timeline of late 8th/early 9th century. Although King Shahryar is conceived as the ruler of India and “Indochina,” his Islamization is clear from the beginning. Both cuckolds, King Shahryar flees with his brother Shahzaman in what could be construed as an attempt to renounce life at court and his rule as a king. Yet, when both brothers are extorted into sleeping with the concubine of a demon, the brothers implore the woman by calling upon God, condemning the act similarly, and frightened by the woman’s threat—also carried out in the name of God. Nearly all characters in The Arabian Nights claim devotion to God or are repelled by oaths/bindings in his name, and even the reference to Christian or Zoroastrian slaves does little to reduce the cumulative effect: the text “feels” Islamic, not at all the product of a pre-Islamic world.
Astute readers of the text will observe the familiar “demon” within the text, the Middle Eastern djinn, as another culturally specific fixture of the text. Yet, the appearance of other creatures will delight these same careful readers. Polymorphed individuals (most often the result of a curse), ghouls (whose ecology is unique and distinctly different from other undead), the constructs of magic (similar to golems of Hebraic origin), as well as ghost cities all lend Arabian Nights a powerful atmospheric, at times bestowing a touch of horror amidst the more erotic and sumptuous texture of other stories. Regardless of content, all the stories in Nights share a distinctive feature: they are stories within the story, a narrative generated within the narrative.
By traditional literary definition, Queen Shahrazad may be conceived as the protagonist of Nights. Whether her ingenious plan is born of nationalistic integrity or humanistic fervor matters not; Shahrazad is determined to stop King Shahryar from murdering a new bride each night. This framework—the storyteller plying their trade to stay alive—also recurs within the stories generated by the storyteller. Frequently at the mercy of an intended executioner, the characters in Shahrazad’s tales seek a stay of execution by tempting their captors with tales that will either delight, amaze, or otherwise exonerate their culpability in whatever prompted their pending execution. The cyclical nature of the stories requires a reader’s close attention: when another story begins in a story, it sometimes requires the interlude between tales where Shahrazad’s own execution is stayed in which the King muses or instructs Shahrazad to focus on a particular tale.

Figure 1: Shahrazad intrigues her husband King Shahryar with tales that may not be left unfinished.
Perhaps neglected from close study is the character of Dinarzad, Shahrazad’s sister. By serving her sister’s whims in compelling the stories to be told, Dinarzad functions as an important structural component of the story. Ever present, the text offers the peculiar mention that Dinarzad is present when the King “satisfied himself” with Shahrazad by sleeping under their bed. Although sex and sexuality charge Nights throughout, the positioning of intercourse within the auspices of Islam requires some definition. Even in a polyandrous society, Islam governs the way in which sexual intercourse is to be carried out by a man with more than one wife. Although Dinarzad is not Shahryar’s wife, she would ostensibly be able to hear the king and queen copulating, which is not “makrooh,” or “haraam” (forbidden). Viewing the intercourse of others is forbidden, although if a second (or third or fourth) wife renounces her right to her own house, Islam allows for a husband to share a bed with two wives by sleeping between them. These distinctions may seem diminutive, but such definitions help to understand Nights as stories that have had Islamic society woven into the text rather than the other way around.
Sex and sexuality are ever present in Nights, with the familiar themes of a woman’s beauty, duty, and familial role cast in recognizably restricted and traditional ways. A closer look at some of the finer points of Nights offers a somewhat obfuscated truth, however: it is often the female who overpowers or thwarts a proud and powerful male. Further, Shahrazad’s eventual stay from execution has reprieved countless other women who would have been consigned to death. Under these auspices, the female (though often “defeated” by a vengeful male) brandishes superior power to her male counterpart, albeit with wicked or demonic powers and motivation assigned to her. Women in the text are nearly all instigators, with adultery and the reacting of the cuckold (the men in the stories) seeking reciprocity and retributive justice.
If one were to read the text to gain a sense of cultural sensibility, the meaning lifted may be that adultery is the most heinous crime an individual could potentially commit; also, important to this distinction is that the privileged men within the text all have concubines and slaves which the reader may infer that the conclusion is men (especially rich ones) may do as they please, but women and the preservation of fidelity is of the utmost importance. When placing Nights alongside other texts written across cultures, one may too note that the absence of war, battles, and sweeping tales of combat are absent. The focus on mini-fables—nearly vignettes—is given precedence in Nights. Although a fixed chronology is unavailable for it, Nights does have centuries of oral tradition and retelling, all of which seemingly bereft the epic combat sequences of stories penned. Why is this?
Every culture and society suffers the consequence of wars. Perhaps their absence is an indication of the society(s) that the tales originate, containing a focus on the fantastical folklore elements to charm and invite the listener/reader in, rather than to boast a conqueror’s status, of civilizational omnipotence. Paired with wish-granting demons and polymorphing sorceresses, war does seem rather tame. The cultural sensibility or editor’s choice does create a unique collection though in their absence.
Nights offers a reader Prince Husain’s magical carpet ride to a world suspended between its pagan origins and emergent monotheistic trappings. The immense popularity of Nights in Western culture requires little understanding; although Galland’s translation cut many of the erotic passages, the context was still there. Even before Burton reinstalled such moments in his translation, Galland’s translation enjoyed unchallenged popularity. Regardless of which translation examined, the cultural appropriations of the translators pervade the work they published and nonetheless situate the text in popular consciousness despite continuing and more authentic scholarship.
Perhaps responsible then (and even now) for engineering a sense of foreignness and mystery over the “Orient,” Nights endures as a delightful collection of the imagination of a world few Westerners will ever know. The conscious of such a world created fantastic new tropes and templates, embedding elements of horror, mystery, and erotica that would take centuries to come into distinct genres of their own—all of which owing a debt to Nights and the author’s it influenced. Later epistolary tales such as Stoker’s Dracula or romantic tales such as Polidori’s The Vampyre all carry the signature and formula: mysteries of the east manifest upon the “enlightened” west, victim to the strange and fantastical. The “other” was ever present then as it is now, a cultural divide whose enmeshed histories nonetheless have thankfully allowed for infusions of literary crossover, providing the reader a far richer setting than ever would be achieved by cultural homogeneity.

[Dr Goon Taco Supreme · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I read, “The Arabian Nights,” because Mark Twain recommended it in a list of books he offered up when someone asked him what he thought was worth reading.

I think because I actually read a book on a recommendation of Mark Twain that I might actually qualify as a “super nerd.”

A super nerd is worse than just a regular nerd, but not in a good way. I’m just a really weird nerd, that's all.

I think Twain must have read a different translation then the one I checked out from the library. I got the Husain Haddawy translation and I think it’s supposed to be pretty loyal to the original works. I think Twain probably read the Galland translation, which was more European in its nature, if I understand things correctly.

Because I love Twain, I can only assume that he must have read and enjoyed a more westernized version of this book, because the book I read was so authentic and historically and culturally accurate that it churned my modern female American stomach.

Basically, "The Arabian Nights,” was just a trainwreck of horrible for me to read and I hated this book.
The whole premise was distasteful to me.

In short, these two kings had wives who cheated on them with black slaves. Why it matters that the slaves were black I know not. Perhaps it was just important to throw a little racism in with the misogyny of the story.

At any rate, the queens cheated on their kings and the one king decided that from then on, he’d marry a new woman every night, have sex with her, and then kill her in the morning.

His vizier’s daughter, Shadrazad, decided to marry the king–on her own initiative- and enchant him with a story every night. Her plan worked. By telling a rambling and uncompleted tale every night, Shadrazad piqued the kings curiosity to know the rest of the story, and thus, she saved her own life and the lives of many women who otherwise would have been murdered by the king.

With that being said, I thought the stories were rambling and frequently just mean. The language used in the tales was often crass and gross. The whole premise of the book was inappropriate for children.

Then on top of that, the stories were boring, and I don’t think they were instructive in any way. And the hatred for women so permeated the pages that I don’t like the people who invented the original tales, nor do I care for those individuals who bothered to repeat these stories, and to be frank with you, I think it was a waste of time and paper to write the stories down.

I dislike the entire culture that produced this work and I don’t care if anyone has beef with that either. To be frank, the tales were mean and they sucked.

Now, “The Story of Sindbad the Sailor,” wasn’t so bad. I enjoyed reading about Sindbad’s adventures, and the details of his travels were a relief after the terrible tales told to avert murder I’d been subjected to for so long (271 nights of, “What is this (story) compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night, if the king spares me and lets me live! Amounting to 302 pages of desperate and pathetic rambling. She ought to have just killed the king.)

The rest of this book was criticism, some of which I understood and some of which I didn’t understand at all.

The most ridiculous thing I read in the criticism section of the book was an actual psychological analysis of the king in which his hatred of women was blamed on something bad his mother had done to him as a child.

I wish I had gotten a version of, “The Arabian Nights,” that did not have a lengthy criticism section because I forced myself to read that entire part of the book, and I got little out of it. Furthermore, it took a long time to read this book and now I’m salty because I am way behind in my reading challenge for this year and I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch up and this book was not good enough, or enjoyable enough, to warrant the time I wasted reading it.

[Luis Pablo Cornejo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, would recommend. Sadly not 1,001 nights and neither Aladdin or Ali-Baba are included (they don't belong here anyway).

Many (the vast majority) of the stories are page-turners but some aren't. My favorite was Sindbad the Sailor which is surprisingly Homeric but undeniably quite unique as well.

Although sometimes it's hard to follow the inception-esque story line of the Nights, their short length allows an effortless read aided by the divisions both by story and by night.

Definitely worth the read and the Norton edition provides very interesting and much-needed context readings by selected authors. I will be looking forward to reading some of these (since many are inappropriate) to my kids.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a selection from this legendary anthology, this collection does well to capture the unique flavor of these tales that has enchanted us, and Shahrayar for so long. It is a bit repetitive with the litany of treacherous wives who cuckold their wise and devout husbands, and formulaic prose can glaze the eye over at times. Still, the story-within-story-within-story telescopic effect that occurs here has an oddly pleasant feeling to it, much utilized by the great writers of magical realism.

There is value in a well-told story that outstrips time and culture, and reading parts of The Arabian Nights leaves one yearning to collect, and more importantly, share.

[Rickey McKown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Choice of Haddawy's translation of Muḥsin Mahdī's edition of the oldest 1001 Nights manuscript was a good one, although this volume is not the complete text - after Night 130 there much of it is omitted. Adding "The Story of Sindbad the Sailor" from Haddawy's second volume is a bit of a trade-off. As I had already read the full Haddawy translation the main attraction of this volume was the "context" readings, which were very informative and insightful, and especially so as the works from which they are extracted are in many cases not readily available.

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Read the selections I needed for teaching, not the whole thing yet)

[Quinn Seidenman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed many of these stories and will hold onto this book to read to my children as bedtime stories.

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've recently read several interesting short story collections from antiquity, namely The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Each of them has inspired enough academic articles to fill a library, so I'm not going to delve into their historical import or the ways each has influenced future literature, but I think its valuable to consider how they compare to each other in approach and how I saw them as stories.

First, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's unfinished collection provides a great window into what life was like in the middle ages, more specifically England in the 1300s. By providing a diverse cast of story tellers as the vehicles for the stories themselves Chaucer is able to explore many professions and various points on the social hierarchy, satirizing and criticizing all the flaws he saw in his society. To an extent these are interesting, but social satire does not always age well. While it certainly gives you a sense of how England looked through Chaucer's eyes (a den of corruption and hypocrisy for the most part, especially when discussing the religious institutions), it can be hit or miss as to whether the critique has aged well. Critique on chivalry in The Knight's Tale? I'm in. Critique of alchemists wherein pages and pages of ingredients are listed? Yawn. Additionally, the majority of the tales aren't that deep, with many being raunchy stories of pure entertainment and others being morality tales with blatantly obvious messages (pride is bad and fortune is fickle, we get it). The message of one tale was flat out stated to be "beware of treachery." Was there someone at the time arguing that treachery wasn't that big a deal and we should just ignore it?

In reverse chronological order the next up is Arabian Nights. This collection is amorphous enough that many tales pop up in one edition and not another, which in my opinion weakens the arguments I see about the collection having a set of coherent themes or messages. The sole theme that I found to be consistent was the power of storytelling- it appears in the frame narrative, of course, but also the stories themselves often showcase the ability of stories to trick the powerful, and oftentimes stories lead to sub-stories and so on, like nesting dolls. Toward the end of the collection the descriptions began to get to me: if I never see someone described as being "as beautiful as the moon" with "lips like coral" and other features like various gems I'll be a happy reader. The Norton Critical addition showed its worth by providing many additional pieces inspired by the Arabian Nights, as well as critical analyses of the text (some of which I found less than convincing, but always interesting). More so than the other two collections Arabian Nights just struck me as a bunch of stories, many of which of course were intended to edify, but mostly its purpose was to entertain. It more or less accomplished this.

The earliest, and also the best, of the three collections was Ovid's Metamorphoses. Chaucer references the classic explicitly several times in his work, and it's no wonder: Ovid is the master that Chaucer tried and failed to match. What put this collection above the others for me was that Ovid not only had a consistent theme to the stories (transformations, as the title would suggest), but also stories flow from one to the next, mostly with an organic feeling that makes the work take on a grander scale. Ovid's not just telling stories, he's tracing the history of the world, explaining how the world became populated with the birds and plants and animals that fill it, and connecting the past all up to what was then the present day. It also serves as the source for much of what we know of Greek/Roman mythology, as Ovid was also setting down an account of the actions and behavior of the gods. Framing narratives can be used to great effect, just look at If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino for a phenomenal example, but Canterbury Tales creates such a framing narrative only to leave it incomplete, and Arabian Nights slowly siphons away the importance of the frame narrative until it is forgotten entirely. In comparison, Ovid's Metamorphoses connection of his tales makes his work stand on a grander scale, and makes it feel like a more coherent whole. A note on translations, I found Charles Martin's work to be very strong in general, although he makes a few bizarre choices. Translating a singing contest into a rap battle was a clear mistake. Overall, though, I feel confident recommending him so long as you want a more modern take on the text.

All three collections have stood the test of time, and each is an essential read to understand the ages and cultures they arose out of. Between the three of them, though, Ovid's Metamorphoses is the most worthy of your time in my opinion.

[Kurt Douglass · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the storytelling more than the stories. What I mean is that I found Shahrazad's framing techniques, her embedding of stories within stories within stories, and her ending each night with a cliffhanger so the story (and her life) would be prolonged to the next night, to be ingenious. The stories themselves were a mashup of fairy tales, fables, legends, mythology, and fantasy, often with Islamic theological or moral underpinnings. I found many of them mediocre, with plot holes, logical inconsistencies, one-dimensional characters, and redundancies. This might be expected from this kind of literature, but I did not think they delivered on the entertainment factor that Shahrazad and her sister Dinarzad promised.

Maybe the issue was this particular edition, which contained an abridged selection of the tales. I was disappointed that Norton left out the two most famous stories of the Arabian Nights - Aladdin and Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. According to them, these stories were not part of the original text and were likely an invention of Antoine Galland, who first translated the tales into French. However, given their close association with the Arabian Nights, Norton should have included them in an appendix.

[Mpho3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haddawy's translation is wonderful - rich, lively, frank, and expressive. If I can point to any faults in the work, it's only that once I got used to the storytelling mechanism, I got bored with the constant vilification of women, slaves, and blacks, who are all as sinister and malicious as can be unless a demon beats them to the punch. I understand that these stories are truly from another time and place, but after awhile that caveat failed to keep me from being bothered. For that matter, the "good" characters are often morally questionable as well. By the time I reached Sinbad, I was utterly unable to be forgiving. I prefer to remember the cinematic/stop-motion versions of Sinbad's heroism and adventures from my childhood.

[English Education]

The Arabian Nights, also known as One Thousand and One Nights, is a classic story about a king who finds out his wife has had an affair and for revenge he chooses one bride each night, takes her virginity and then has her executed the next morning, until he gets to Scheherazade, who manages to keep the king's attention through an ongoing story. The text would appeal to students who have an interest in fantasy. I would use it in a unit that focuses on the power of storytelling, power and privilege, or fantasy. It would also be really useful in a diverse classroom because there are so many translations and versions.
Good to note: there are many versions of this text, some conclude the story and some do not.

[George Siehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting tales of human behavior, love, and adventure beyond the fairy tale book stories we remember from childhood, such as Ali Baba. This volume includes a number of adult tales told in an ornate, formulaic manner. The ability of Shahrazad to spin out complex, linked stories to hold the king's attention night after night to delay her execution is clearly demonstrated. Worth reading, at least in part, to appreciate the fullness of themes beyond those we read as children. Michael Dirda's review of the classic in his collection of book reviews, "Bound to Please" was the incentive to explore the work.

[Taqo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading it for a course, though I much prefer Sir Richard Burton's version (which I've never finished). The English may be archaic, but I think that's part of the charm! Nonetheless, I'm enjoying this one.

And since the English in this one isn't old English, it definitely makes it an easier read, so I can't complain too much.

Next goal: Get the Arabic version!

[Daniel Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical, bawdy, inventive, occasionally hilarious, these tales have been an especially wondrous accompaniment to my travels in Morocco over the holiday season. Would that I had 1,001 nights to enjoy them at a proper pace, but I raced through the ones on offer in this collection pretty speedily -- once you start, it's hard to stop.

[Colin Myles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A joy to read the stories as close as they were originally intended. You can feel the words flow and float over the page. The second part which is a discussion of the stories beginnings, may put off some,but stick with it, as some great information here.

[Kate M. Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another text read for my World Literature class. I enjoyed reading Scheherazade’s many fantastical stories, with their various layers and moral messages for the corrupt king. I also appreciated that each “night” was short, which made it an easy book to read in small bursts.

[Lussine]

I thought it was interesting in the beginning but then when it got repetative at parts it just started to get boring no offence to the writer

[Em]

Love the inclusion of essays at the end

[Mills College Library]

398 A658ah 2010

[Nathan Harbison · Rating 4 out of 5]

(colt 0510k) thank you prof muhanna