One Aladdin Two Lamps

by Jeanette Winterson

I can change the story because I am the story.

With her execution looming, a woman is fighting for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps cracks open the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights to reveal new questions and answers we are still thinking about today. Who should we trust? Is love the most important thing in the world? Does it matter whether you are honest? What makes us happy?

In her guise as Aladdin – the orphan who changes his world – Jeanette Winterson asks us to reread what we think we know and look again at how fiction works in our lives, giving us the courage to change our own narratives and alter endings we wish to subvert. As a young working-class woman, with no obvious future beyond factory work or marriage, Winterson realised through the power of books that she could read herself as fiction as well as fact.

Weaving together fiction, magic and memoir, this remarkable book is a tribute to the age-old tradition of storytelling and a radical step into the future – an invitation to look more closely at our own stories, and to imagine the world anew.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Writing, Essays, Queer, Adult, Biography Memoir

258 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication January 20, 2026

About the author

Novelist Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester, England in 1959. She was adopted and brought up in Accrington, Lancashire, in the north of England. Her strict Pentecostal Evangelist upbringing provides the background to her acclaimed first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. She graduated from St Catherine's College, Oxford, and moved to London where she worked as an assistant editor at Pandora Press.

One of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge during the 1980s, Winterson was named as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Writers" in a promotion run jointly between the literary magazine Granta and the Book Marketing Council.

She adapted Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for BBC television in 1990 and also wrote "Great Moments in Aviation," a television screenplay directed by Beeban Kidron for BBC2 in 1994. She is editor of a series of new editions of novels by Virginia Woolf published in the UK by Vintage. She is a regular contributor of reviews and articles to many newspapers and journals and has a regular column published in The Guardian. Her radio drama includes the play Text Message, broadcast by BBC Radio in November 2001.

Winterson lives in Gloucestershire and London. Her work is published in 28 countries.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen, if a book takes itself THAT seriously, employing a declamatory style full of moral certainty, I expect complex, sharp, challenging thoughts - okay, even then the formal delivery would bother me, but to couple this sound with a bunch of banalities is really quite something. Winterson gives us a hybrid essay collection, structured around The Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights): Short excerpts or references to the tales, told in a contemporary style, are followed by personal essays about all kinds of topics, and I couldn't help but feeling that the classic tales are stand-ins for the gospel followed by the sermon, and I was transported to a weird mass. But not a Catholic mass, mind you: There is no opulence, no incense, no drama, just Protest work ethic and sparseness. Pass me the sacramental wine, I want to drown my literary sorrows.

One main point Winterson addresses again and again, which is also the hinge to "The Arabian Nights", is the assumption that the world is made up of stories, and that creativity changes the world (not that she goes into the theory behind this, it's more of a superficial argument that sees narrative as a weapon against the ills she mentions, like anti-women politics). The modulation around this bothered me, because we should be way beyond this simplistic take by now: What MAGA does is also narration, so we need to ask how narration needs to relate to the real world, how we judge narration, because to just applaud the creative act itself is not only simplistic, but outright wild at this point. Then, we could also debate her on some issues: The fear for women's exclusive spaces, the lazy arguments regarding the perils of the digital world (TikTok bad), a dubious faith in AI.

Sure, these are opinion pieces, and the author's strong convictions are part of Winterson's style. The thing is though: this reader has always been bored by the likes of Bertolt Brecht, because of the didactic and ultimately condescending (that's my strong take :-)) approach of epic theater. When it comes to declaring personal truths, Winterson is the same, and I find that annoying. Let me explain: I like nuanced essays with authors that truly ponder complex issues as opposed to surface-level declarations that reduce complexity. Jesus, here's another strong take by yours truly: The urge to reduce complexity is relatable, but it is also the root of many problems society is facing today. And I feel like books like this one cater to readers that enjoy feeling like they and their opinions are correct, which is a fuzzy, cosy, and also very unproductive feeling. Winterson does not aim to convince anyone, she is preaching to the converted.

To what end?

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

Update: WE HAVE A COVER!
Knowing there is an upcoming Winterson is single-handedly instilling a will to live back into my heart like a goddamn marching band!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the story continues..............

And how we tell it changes per person, per time, the feelings change, the tempo changes, the angles change, because our needs change, we change and the story changes with us.

How we tell a story reflects who we are.

Why we tell a story reflects our needs.

What story we tell reflects our priorities, what we value.

When we tell the story reflects the point where we are in our lives.

Where we tell the story, the choice of our audience, reflects our position in the world, where we are and our relationship to our audience and what the needs between us are.

We do need a vision to walk towards, a vision for a better future than the facts of the now anticipate and Winterson is well on the way in helping us towards it.

“Imagination is the power of change”.

Curiosity, imagination, using these to go around and examining all angles of a problem and imagining a solution. Using our minds to find a better end to a story. And ahmmm I mean using our minds, not scrolling and flitting about, jumping from one glittery click onto another.

I’ve been with Winterson walking with Atlas and Leika with occasional sightings of dear Hercules and I treasure these walks. Now I walked with her in another beautiful retelling. This time it’s with Shahrazad. Winterson is able to explore the stories and us so beautifully – fundamental truths – the stories are us – we are the story and like Shahrazad we can change the story.......................

What do you do when you realise that you’re already highlighted most of what you’ve read already, continue highlighting or just consider the book as one highly lit whole, a beacon in fact which connected with your mind and had you nodding and smiling and thinking and frowning and then smiling again with delight.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Imagination is key. To see past the present, with its assumptions and constraints. To see round corners. For me, it was reading. It was literature. But all art is there to develop our imaginative capacity.”

In a world where everyone is becoming more isolated, societies are more polarised and technology and megalomaniacs seem to dominate the news - our worlds - Jeanette Winterson makes a call to arms by asking us - or is that pleading with us - to recognise the power of creativity, the mind expanding beauty of the novel , the might of story telling and the universal need for imagination in our lives.

It is a visit to the theatre as a young child to watch a pantomime - Aladdin - that opened up Jeanette Winterson’s world - an enlightenment of the possibility that stories that give us. Using Shahrazad’s stories from One Thousand and One Nights, we are taken on a magical carpet of tales : of wrong doers, genii, magic, survival and incredible characters.

But it is within these tales and the power of storytelling that we are asked to reflect on universal questions of love, belonging, trust , the human need for wanting more - greed and avarice- being truthful, and what do we actually mean by happiness.

Juxtaposing the tales against societal changes and global issues -poverty, feminism, oppression, the failure of politics- helping us to look at our own stories and the world about us.

This is a powerful and persuasive argument of the importance of reading and books to open up imaginations and minds to see alternative paths, build tolerance and compassion and ultimately build a future that embraces love and humanity. This is not idealistically naive but highlights what we have lost and could further lose but still have a chance to save. Attention is given to the closing of minds through scrolling world of social media and extremism hijacking lives. Those of us who lived BSM - Before the Smart Phone- know the difference and impact.

Articulate, captivating , hypnotic and also entertaining ( the retelling of Shahrazad’s stories are enthralling) This may be a book for the already converted - the lovers of fiction and creativity and the arts- but equally this may get a new audience( or all of us ) to further consider the power of storytelling and determining a different future where our personal story takes us all on a wider path of diversity and happiness and hope for the future .

Long live books - or at least the freedom to be independently imaginative

Quotes:

Social pressure can be avoided. Social media is unavoidable.

Literature allows complexity, but complexity doesn’t mean obscurity. Literature doesn’t mean boring. What we are hoping for – well, what I am hoping for – is a piece of work with the power to captivate us on many levels.

So no, your TikTok videos won’t bring you meaning, neither will social media’s weapons of mass distraction, that shrink the human mind to its smallest scope. Needing the next dopamine hit from the outside every few minutes is a miserable way to live. It’s a strategy of discontent, and it makes it harder to settle down with a text that asks for our complete attention.

I am aware that reading, the ability to read, the love of reading, might not be part of the coming human journey. We will have music. We will have visual art and moving pictures. We will have theatre. We will have storytelling. Will we have reading?

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

In One Aladdin Two Lamps, Jeanette Winterson uses the story of Scherherazade, the ultimate teller of tales, to navigate experiences women have in the modern world.

I confess, I have not read One Thousand and One Nights and my knowledge of Scheherazade is limited to Aladdin and Ali Baba, both of which stories I can guarantee are not the pantomime/Disney tales we have become used to.

The tales that Winterson uses to illustrate her points are cleverly interwoven with personal memoir, political doctrine and religious beliefs. Certainly, a lot of it was very illuminating.

The last Winterson I read was "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" so it was a delight to read her prose again. This book made me want to a) read One Thousand and One Nights; and b) read more Jeanette Winterson.

Clever, interesting and well written. Definitely recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advance review copy.

[Jessi ❤️ H. Vojsk [if villain, why hot?] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art is there to focus our attention.
When I read, I get out of my current situation and inside a very different situation. It doesn't matter whether I identify or recoil. Whether I agree or I don't.

My first book by Jeanette Winterson was „why be happy when you can be normal“ and I loved that I took a little biography of the author with me to really understand this new release.

If we simply airlift a human from a terrible place to a better one, the terrible place comes along too, because it is already imprinted in the circuitry of self. To untangle and reset that terribleness is no small task.

Jeanette takes us on a journey, a journey through one thousand and one nights in the voice of Sharzard who tries to escape her cruel death by a angry sultan.

To me, it's not astonishing that most women could not contribute to society - what's astonishing is how much women have contributed since we've been able to educate our minds, earn our own money, vote in elections and build independent lives.

While Sharzard tells us stories about journeys, forgiveness and development, we get commentary and little essays by Jeanette looking at our modern times.

But going below the surface, into the deep water that is the substance of these tales, is to meet the same kinds of dilemmas faced in our world, the same judgements, whether reckless or just.
The balance between
punishment and mercy.

I enjoyed this little journey and i especially enjoyed Jeanette Wintersons writing.

[Onur Yasar]

When I read Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion last year, I had described it as “like 1001 Nights set in Europe”. I had no idea then that she was writing a handbook for the actual Nights.

”Empires vanish. Buildings rise and fall. Still we meet on the steps of a story.”

I could say this is the best non-fiction I’ve read recently, but is it non-fiction? What is fiction? What isn’t fiction? She walks us through stories, in ancient times, in modern times, and into the future. Either Shahrazad’s, or her own. Just like 1001 Nights, and just like life, the stories get interrupted with other stories, and begin again, countless times.

”And stories reflect the concerns of the storyteller. No story is neutral or objective. That doesn't make stories unreliable - they are reliably the record of difference and change. The damage we do, the evil we do, is when we twist the facts to fit our warped storytelling.”

With her brilliant prose, this is a great read about storytelling, with a not-so-light touch on contemporary issues, from AI to taxing the super rich.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A conversation with an author is a privilege and Winterson has concluded that this is what readers want, even if what we tend to look for nowadays are sound bites and biography. Opinions get you cancelled all too often, so instead we have Winterson’s imagination with a good dose of experience in lieu of excessive biography or grandstanding (for biography you can read her two other books Oranges and Why be happy…, as she points out). It is amazing in the true sense of the word to have living authors creating works to interact with. Thank you.

[Agni Guha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story about stories. Winterson makes the bleak world we are currently living in, appear hopeful and redeemable. She talks about the power of imagination and narratives to impose change and justice. This is a brilliant book that will make you think and hope.

Thank you to Net Galley for this ARC.

[Jen Burrows · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Aladdin Two Lamps takes the folktales of One Thousand and One Nights and uses them as a gateway to explore the power of storytelling, imagination and creativity. Winterson weaves together personal history and literary criticism into a commentary on what it means to be human.

It's a pretty breathless read, taking on the matryoshka nature of the Nights tales in its meandering timeslip through topics. But Winterson's clear and eloquent prose makes every transition seamless.

A book that will get you thinking and make you fall in love with reading all over again.

*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*

[andra · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What I did discover, as I read books, was exactly what Shahrazad is trying to teach Shahryar: that cruel disappointment is universal, but it is not the only story."

Jeanette Winterson’s memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, in which she recounts her harrowing upbringing growing up lesbian in a strict Pentecostal household in Northern England, is easily one of my favorite books of all time. One Aladdin Two Lamps feels, in many ways, like a companion piece - less focused on personal trauma, but just as urgent and clear. Here, Winterson turns her sharp eye outward, analyzing the current cultural and political climate with clarity, imagination, and a storyteller’s instinct.

In One Aladdin Two Lamps, Winterson revisits a vivid memory from her childhood: attending a pantomime performance of Aladdin. From that memory, she weaves a rich tapestry that moves seamlessly between the personal and the political, the mythical and the real. Using the tales of Shahrazad from One Thousand and One Nights as a guiding thread, Winterson explores how storytelling can serve as an act of resistance, resilience, and reinvention. Shahrazad, whose nightly tales forestall death, becomes a powerful symbol of narrative as survival, an idea that resonates through Winterson’s reflections on contemporary issues such as the rise of fascism in the West, the silencing of women’s voices, and the ongoing battle for truth and justice in a fractured world.

As always, Winterson writes with lyrical precision and fierce conviction. One Aladdin Two Lamps moves fluidly between autobiography, literary history and political analysis, and between fiction and memoir, making the book feel like a conversation across time and genre. What emerges is a meditation on the enduring necessity of stories, not only at an individual level, but also as a tool for societies to recontextualize their own realities.

I adored this book. Winterson is a voice we must cherish.

ARC provided by Grove Atlantic via Netgalley. Thank you!

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

As I'm sure is the case for many people, my introduction to Winterson's work came through Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit that I read a few years ago. I was curious to see what the rest of her work would read like, particularly one with more of a fiction spin on it, although this was still tempered with auto-biographical excerpts.
A number of parts covered the importance of storytelling and imagination which really resonated with me, Winterson discovered much of the wider world through reading as a teenager and that has made her a champion for literature ever since.
Existing fans of her work will no doubt devour this, and I would say that I enjoyed it with a feeling of general interest, as I preferred Oranges

[Benedict Ness 📚 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The creative life can get us out of our mental prisons. The first step is to bring us back to the real world around us. To teach us not to avoid it, blur it, blunt it, or pretend it isn't there. When we find our footing in the real world, then the creative life can take us past it, through it, towards the Else-wheres that exist in every and any imaginative rendering of what it is to be human.”

Love you and nervous to meet you Jeanette.

[Lisa Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shahrazad knew a thing or two about human nature: stories are at the heart of who we are, but stories can change. We can change them. Winterson changed her story from that of an unloved, adopted daughter of an ultra-religious couple through books, those she read and those she wrote.

Using 1001 NIGHTS and her own story, she investigates how stories change us. Brilliant!

[Jenny Blacker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with this book. I'm a big Winterson fan, as a writer and a person, but I'm not sure this particular book gives what the blurb suggests...

It's a mixture of social commentary, a few life snippets and an exploration of story telling via analysis of the 1001 nights stories. This last part I *loved* (my copy was format-garbled, so I don't know if they're easier to read separately in the final copy, but they were jumbled together in mine which made it quite frustrating to work out which type of writing you were reading). I would devour a JW annotated 1001 nights.

The other parts seemed meandering and fell flat for me. Like an extended newspaper opinion piece

If you're a Winterson fan, you'll probably (as I did) at the very least enjoy the writing, but do read a few of the not-5-star reviews for a feel of it before embarking!

I received an advance copy for free from NetGalley, on the expectation that I would provide an honest review.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no answer but one, Love.

[Paulina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about how stories are part of our past, our future, our every day lives. And it's a beautiful reminder of their importance.

Jeanette Winterson takes on One Thousand and One Nights to use them as a perspective to discuss the society at large and the changes we've experienced in the past, as well as the terrifying changes we see happening right now.

The book also points out an interesting distinction in how western stories often focus on Hero's Journey, the cult of individuality that is so prevalent right now seem likely to seem from the way we have been exposed to these types of stories. And Winterson, through Nights, shows us a different type of stories that focuses not only on improving our own situation but what that situation says about the society we live in.

I loved how ultimately optimistic this book feels. Things aren't looking great right now politically, but we still have power. The fascists certainly know how powerful the right story can be, we see it every day on social media and in news. We cannot let that ruin the world we live in.

I think this is not only a great read but also a pretty important one right now so go read it.

Thank you to Jeanette Winterson and the publisher for the ARC.

[Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book after seeing Ms. Winterson speak at a book signing recently. I love 1001 Nights and have read all the volumes over the course of several years. So this book is hard for me to judge.

On one hand, I love Winterson’s acerbic retelling of some of the stories and the insight she brings to Scheherazade. I also like how she weaves in her experiences and interest into the (I guess I’d call it, review? Deconstruction?) of the tales. But that’s sort of where it stops. The sections unrelated to the specific evaluation of the stories is at best tedious. And I mean, I AGREE with Winterson on nearly every point! But it was just super boring to read almost train of thought connections between theories that are, individually, deep thinking and nuanced. Winterson does a lot of wide brushed observations that don’t do these things justice. Sure, it makes someone maybe think and maybe want to learn more. But let’s be honest, who’s reading this book? Certainly not someone who’s never thought of these things and this will become some revelation for them? Maybe I’m wrong. But it seems like this book is just a very good author’s attempt to say her piece in clips, like a TED Talk promo. Creatively woven in with ancient tales, or versions of them.

[Liam Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the UK publishers for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book covers a lot of topics in a relatively small number of pages. I enjoyed how it looked to old tales, particularly the Nights, for lessons which can help us understand the current world we live in.

I was particularly invested in the analysis of particular themes such as feminism, colonialism, existentialism, and definitely left this read thinking much more deeply about my own place in the world and how I can be part of the solution.

It was sad to realise issues from many years ago still continue to blight the world, and it was thought-provoking and even depressing to think that where we have made progress we are currently regressing.

Whilst the book can't provide all the answers to current world issues, it does offer hope and suggests a route way forward in the context of the modern world and considers the impact of technological advances in the future, which I enjoyed.

[lina ✰ · Rating 4 out of 5]

// thank you to the publishers and netgalley for letting me read this arc!

what an absolutely enchanting piece of literature and what a fantastic manifestation of the absolute force that language can have.

this does everything: essay, retelling, novel, cultural commentary. it was like getting a time look inside Jeanette Winterson's mind and i had such a great time. i highlighted so many lines in this story, and could not put it down.

especially as someone who has read bits and pieces of the original; i love the original thousand and one nights and their history, and this lovely discussion of their meaning and relevance made the literature major inside me so happy.

so so grateful i got to read this one early!

[Jediam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't terrible but it was disappointing coming from an author whose work I have really respected and loved. This book just tries to do too much: it's a retelling of 1000 nights, blended with literary analysis and cultural critique and elements of memoir. That pitch appeals to me, but in practice the narrative is so meandering and unfocused that nothing really manage to hook me and keep me interested. From another author, there is no doubt in my mind that this would have been a DNF.

I also felt like a lot of the arguments in this book were very superficial and self-evident, and it feels like a book that preaches to the choir, rather than trying to meaningful advance some of the more progressive viewpoints. Of course, there are occasional nuggets of pure brilliance, but it was a lot of work to only trip across a few of those.

[Sarah Faichney · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘One Aladdin Two Lamps’ is part history lesson, part treatise on humanity - plus a whole lot of hope and inspiration besides. Reading Winterson’s words feels like sitting in the front row (mesmerised) at the most interesting and beautifully delivered lecture, or talk, you will ever attend. Having said that, there is a great sense of intimacy in Winterson’s words. It's like having a very worldly-wise best friend. I haven't felt this deeply invigorated, or enthralled, by a book since I read ‘The Night Alphabet’ by Joelle Taylor. I'm in awe of both these women and the work they produce. It changes something within you, at a fundamental level, empowering as it enchants. I loved every moment of this book and learned so much from it.

I can't say it better than Jeanette Winterson herself, so I leave you with this quote from the book:
“Sometimes, when you are reading, a sentence will knock you out - force you to pause - you will look up, think about what just overtook your whole self. Maybe you will underline it. Maybe you will always remember that line.”

[Garry Nixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the lens of 1001 Nights, Jeanette Winterson takes a good look at the way we live now. She says a lot in a modest space. Most of you on Goodreads will accept the central premise: in the world of Musk, Bitcoin, Trump and AI... keep reading books.

[ariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

she literally wrote this for wintersonheads …. including quoting her previous works in the epigraph and the chapter titles…. who am i to complain

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 - I just found this incredibly tiring

[Frue_s · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bitvis briljant, men bitvis också lättviktig och greppar om för mycket på en gång, utan att tränga djupare in och därmed vara mer intressant. Gillade men är inte blowned away…

[Tual · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so happy when I saw that this book was about to be released. I tried to find a way to read it before publication. I emailed the publisher and eventually realized that I could request it on NetGalley. I was hoping to receive a digital review copy, and here we are. I feel very lucky to have read it. I was a university student when I first discovered Winterson’s work. I started with Written on the Body on the recommendation of one of my best friends and was completely mesmerized by her writing. I cried a lot. The other books followed naturally. Long story short, I am deeply familiar with her style and voice, and I tend to love everything she writes.

One Aladdin Two Lamps operates as a kind of essay: a familiar narrative overwritten with new intentions, where traces of the original fairy tale remain visible but no longer authoritative. Winterson does not retell the story so much as interrogate it, using intertextuality to expose how inherited narratives continue to shape modern world.

The book opens with a scene reminiscent of Waiting for Godot, a space of questioning where dialogue replaces action and answers remain provisional. Winterson recalls a school trip to a pantomime, her first encounter with the story of Aladdin. This Aladdin was not the familiar Disney version. It was Britain’s favorite pantomime, yet the story itself was strange and unsettling. Aladdin sat on pillows in a washhouse, reading a book. The image lingers, quietly subversive. From the opening pages, Winterson rewrites Aladdin.

She reminds the reader that these stories traveled by word of mouth long before they were written down. Change was not corruption but condition. Every retelling alters the tale, and translation itself produces new versions. The glory of stories lies precisely in this instability.

Winterson draws a connection between modern anxieties and the deep narrative structures that have circulated for centuries, using old stories as a testing ground for new ideas. Her narrative voice is distinctly metafictional. The text repeatedly draws attention to its own storytelling mechanisms, interrupting immersion in order to provoke reflection.

Winterson as a storyteller refuses linearity. Cause this is how Shahrazad escapes the grim reaper, buying time with her stories. It moves across multiple times and genres, blending memoir, criticism, myth, and speculation. This structural hybridity mirrors its argument that no single narrative frame is sufficient.

“I can change the story because I am the story.” This declaration sits at the center of the book and functions as both method and conviction. For Winterson, authorship is a form of magic. The lamp becomes language, and the flying carpet becomes imagination. Writing is the space where personal history and literary criticism collapse into one another. The self is not simply narrated; it is revised.

The book recognizes that no one enters the world as a blank page. A narrative starts before we are born. Long before we learn to speak for ourselves, circumstances are already shaping the voice that will eventually claim the word “I.” Class, gender, race, religion, and history write their lines early. By the time we begin to speak, much of the script has already been handed to us. From this perspective, narrative is not decorative but necessary. Storytelling becomes a survival strategy, especially under pressure. Winterson situates her thinking against the rise of fascism, the increasing constraints placed on women, and the persistent forces of history that attempt to fix identity.

Darwin appears as a revealing example. He is presented as a scientific genius shaped by Victorian patriarchy. He believed women to be physically and mentally inferior to men, a conviction rooted in the assumptions of his time. At the same time, he opposed slavery, understanding that race functioned more as a social fiction than a biological truth. Darwin recognized that creationism was itself a story, one that no longer worked, and that it needed to be rewritten. Science, here, becomes another form of narrative revision.

The Thousand and One Nights begins with an ending designed to repeat endlessly. A kingdom is running out of virgins because the king executes a new woman each night, seeking revenge on all women after his wife’s betrayal. The vizier has two daughters. One of them is Shahrazad. She offers herself to the king. Each night she tells a story, and each story opens into another, postponing the ending. There is no time to die. Shahrazad succeeds because time does not operate linearly in the human mind. In daydreams and stories, chronology loosens its grip. Winterson returns to this idea as both form and philosophy: survival depends not on escaping the story, but on reshaping it.

For me, Winterson’s approach also recalls Derrida’s philosophy, particularly his insistence that meaning is never fixed or original but continually deferred through repetition and revision. Like Derrida, she treats stories as structures without stable origins, shaped by translation, retelling, and difference rather than fidelity to any authentic version. Her non-linear narrative, resistance to closure, and emphasis on rewriting echo Derrida’s claim that there is no outside-text, that meaning does not exist beyond language and narrative frameworks but is produced within them. In both cases, storytelling becomes a way of keeping meaning alive by refusing to let it settle into final authority.
She is also indebted to modernist experimentation. Woolf’s fluid sense of time, Borges’s labyrinthine texts, etc. These are writers who treated fiction as a way of thinking rather than simply representing reality.

Her inspiration sits at a crossroads. Literature offers the freedom to experiment. Lived experience supplies urgency. The result is fiction that thinks, while remaining aware that thinking itself is shaped by the stories we inherit and rewrite.

Shahrazad’s solution exists beyond the limits of ordinary chronological time. Each morning is meant to bring death, a fixed endpoint governed by linear logic. Yet she disrupts this certainty by refusing the forward march of time itself. By opening one story into another, she creates a suspension in which the future is endlessly deferred. Survival becomes possible not by escaping death, but by delaying it through narrative.

Through reading and writing, Winterson learns how to think, how to question, analyze, and resist inherited narratives. Yet thinking alone is not enough. Imagination allows thought to move beyond repetition. It opens alternative futures and makes change conceivable rather than merely logical. This imaginative shift allows her to read herself as fiction rather than as fact. Identity is no longer fixed or given but written, revised, and open to transformation. If the self is a story, then it can be told differently.

The book also insists that what matters most are encounters with others. Stories do not survive in isolation. Shahrazad’s life depends on a listener, just as meaning depends on exchange, on who speaks, who listens, and how the story is received.

What becomes increasingly clear is that Winterson uses storytelling as a strategy of attention. She knows that readers arrive for the fiction, for the alternative version of the tale, for the momentum of narrative and the question of what happens next. Yet she repeatedly interrupts that momentum with intrusions from the real world: historical facts, political concerns, philosophical reflections, and personal memories woven together with literary analysis. These interruptions are not digressions. They function as interventions.

In this sense, Winterson seems to be doing something very close to what Shahrazad does. Rather than confronting the reader with direct polemic or sustained non-fiction argument, she embeds urgent questions inside a story that demands listening. The reader stays for the narrative, but while staying is asked to think about power, violence, gender, religion, technology, and history. The prose repeatedly turns away from enchantment toward reality, refusing the comfort of full immersion. Attention is gently, almost quietly, redirected.

This hybrid form suggests a belief that stories can carry difficult ideas more effectively than argument alone. Winterson seems aware that many readers resist being instructed, especially when faced with familiar political or philosophical debates. By mixing genres, she makes these issues more approachable, not by simplifying them, but by weaving them into narrative desire. Meaning arrives indirectly, through association and delay.

Time becomes crucial here. Just as Shahrazad buys time by extending the story, Winterson buys intellectual time for the reader. Each interruption slows consumption and creates space for reflection. The reader is held between story and analysis, unable to rush forward without absorbing what has just been said.

From this perspective, One Aladdin Two Lamps is less concerned with offering solutions than with training attention. She creates the conditions in which thinking becomes unavoidable. Storytelling becomes an ethical act, not because it delivers morals, but because it insists on listening. In a world saturated with noise and urgency, that insistence may be its most radical gesture.

Like Shahrazad, Winterson also delays death. She suspends closure, postpones finality, and creates a space in which urgent things can still be said. Storytelling becomes a way of escaping silence for a while, holding the reader’s attention long enough to speak about what matters. She does not demand that we listen. She draws us in quietly, almost secretly, through narrative desire. By the time we realize we are listening, the story has already done its work.

Winterson repeatedly turns to fiction as a way of approaching harsh truths that might otherwise resist direct articulation. The interruptions, the shifts into analysis, history, and personal anecdote prevent the narrative from becoming fully immersive or purely poetic. Yet this feels purposeful. This story could have been more lyrical, more detailed, more uninterrupted, but it is precisely its refusal of sustained enchantment that gives it force. Fiction here does not console. It creates space for difficult listening, allowing reality to enter before the spell can fully close.

I cannot say that this is my favorite book by Winterson, but it is one that stays with you and grows over time. Some of its intentions feel deliberately unclear, as if not everything is meant to be fully understood right away, or even ever. That openness is part of what makes the book linger.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Tara ☆ Tarasbookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been far too long since I’ve had the *immense pleasure* to read a book by Jeanette Winterson. A beloved author I discovered and devoured in my youth, I recently realized a return is long overdue.

Hailed as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” in Elle magazine, Winterson’s writing is as thoughtful, eloquent and engaging as I recall. A compelling blend of memoir, an overarching feminist viewpoint, a reimagining of One Thousand and One Nights and a look to the future, Winterson seamlessly synthesizes myriad threads into a beautiful and brilliant book. One Aladdin, Two Lamps is thought provoking, discerning and timely. Not wanting to stop reading but not wanting the book to end—time seemed to be suspended within these pages as my mind was held aloft to consider new heights and horizons—a magical feat indeed.

One Aladdin, Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson is a jewel of a book. A rare writer whose work I have admired and has enthralled me for decades.

Expected Publication Date: January 20, 2026

Many thanks to NetGalley, Jeanette Winterson, and Grove Atlantic for access to a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like magic. Jeanette Winterson weaves tales within tales. An exploration of the story of 1001 Nights serves as the vehicle by which Winterson explores contemporary culture, AI, the rise of the far right, environmentalism and the effects of social media. Stories beget stories as Winterson looks at not only how we shape story but how story shapes us.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiction is much more than social-realist cut-outs of contemporary life. More than representation. Fiction declares and debates inner realities that gradually press forward into our outer circumstances. We catch up with our dreams.
 
When we are reading, yes, we turn the pages, and the pages follow in an orderly fashion, but in our  minds, we are moving around, and generally we don’t finish a book in one sitting. This is a good thing
– we are letting the text act on us more slowly. We are absorbing it. Then it is part of our private library.
The reason fiction is so good at moving around in time – compressing or expanding normal, linear time
– is that our creative minds are not linear. We are always simultaneously journeying between past and future. The present is often provisional – we don’t understand it till it’s over. Fiction works with this truth about our non-linear minds. So does poetry, that might take a single memory or insight and hold it for us so that it seems to stretch across far more time than the space it occupies.
 
Fiction is odd because it deals in the invented memories of invented lives, yet its artifice brings us more vividly to an understanding – perhaps a reconciliation, sometimes a renunciation – of memories of our own. We believe our lives actually happened. Perhaps they did. What we have read did not happen – at least not in the same way – and yet each becomes a commentary on the other. My life on what I have read. What I have read on my life.

 
A really different and fascinatingly framed blend of memoir, fiction, reflective essay, speculative essay which starts and ends with Winterson’s first visit to a theatre and the story of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp but which quickly expands to One Thousand and One Nights.
 
And from there the actual stories told by Shahrazad are recounted and retold by Winterson, linked to modern day themes and used by her as a framing device allowing her to simultaneously explore storytelling (and especially but not exclusively the reading of written fiction), her own life and the world – past, present and future. 
 
The sheer breadth of topics covered – all shot through with Winterson’s own past as well as her clear love of written fiction – is breathtaking.
 
Some of these probably appealed to my prejudices – for example despite being a fan of audiobooks her views on their limitations – “we’re likely to focus on story and miss much of what the language can offer – unless our minds are already trained to ‘hear’ language as language and not just as content delivery …. Reading is not linear in the way that audiobooks and movies make ‘content’ linear. When we are reading, yes,”;
 
Others I found challenging but far from confrontational – for example her well informed and well thought through views on religion in general and Christianity in particular.
 
Some I found surprisingly honest – for example her reflections on her views of her sexuality as a response rather than fixed, as an evolution rather than pathology/genetic/lifestyle choice and her comment looking back that “I felt that my process of becoming was forced too soon into a statement of being …… the labels were applied faster than my understanding could rip them off”. 
 
Others I thought were bought remarkable balance and empathy to emotive topics – for example the trans debate. 
 
Others perhaps counter-current-literary-consensus but still caveated views on revolutions past (the US) and present/future (AI) – the latter of which she is I think much more positive about its prospects than many and also very cleverly links back to themes and ideas in 1001 nights (there is a delightful comparison of tech bros downloading their consciousness for future resurrection as potentially in future being stuck on some poor person’s laptop - like genies trapped in a bottle).
 
There are I think occasional missteps – a section for example on Ada Lovelace strays a little too much into not just the Novel-by-Wiki trope but also feels like telling an overly familiar story from Girls Who Changes The World genre. But these are more than compensated for by the abundance of other positive elements.
 
Overall, a book both thought provoking and entertaining and eminently quotable.
 
Highly recommended and with my usual focus on literary prizes I hope a few judging panels are open minded enough to recognise that this book which partly uses fiction to explore the power of fiction to tell us the story of who we are (and understand who others are) – should be eligible for Fiction Prizes.
 
My thanks to Random House UK, Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley