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    One Thousand and One Nights
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    One Thousand and One Nights
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    One Thousand and One Nights
    Ebook325 pages5 hours

    One Thousand and One Nights

    By Hanan al-Shaykh

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh

    'Magical ... bursting with jinnis and mischief' Donna Tartt
    'One of the finest writers of her generation' Financial Times

    One Thousand and One Nights     are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad under sentence of death to King Shahrayar. Maddened by the discovery of his wife's orgies, King Shahrayar vows to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. To survive, his newest wife Shahrazad spins a web of tales each night, leaving the King in suspense when morning comes, prolonging her life for another day.

    Gathered from India, Persia and across the great Arab empire, these mesmerising stories tell of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Retold by Hanan al-Shaykh, One Thousand and One Nights are revealed in an intoxicating new voice.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateAug 15, 2011
    ISBN9781408826713
    Unavailable
    One Thousand and One Nights
    Author

    Hanan al-Shaykh

    Hanan al-Shaykh is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on Arab womanhood.  Her works include Women of Sand and Myrrh, The Story of Zahra, Beirut Blues and The Locust and the Bird.  Tim Supple is one of the world's leading theatre directors and creators. His widely-acclaimed works include Twelfth Night (Channel 4 film), Tales from Ovid, A Servant to Two Masters (both RSC) and a multi-lingual A Midsummer Night's Dream (Dash Arts/world tour).

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    Reviews for One Thousand and One Nights

    4/5

    55 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is the most satisfying retelling or translation of the Tales of the Arabian Nights that I've read. The Tales are full of wonder: genies, wizards, long voyages, riddles, romantic and erotic love. Yet, most versions struggle with (or worse, are simply marred by) the gross misogyny and racism of the original stories. Al-Shaykh handles that by editing out much of the racism, though traces remain - particularly in the way the stories implicitly view black male sexuality as a threat to social order. What she does with the misogyny is an active success. One repeating theme in the original stories is the question of whether men or women are more treacherous; another is the tension between passionate violence and reconciliation. By cutting away many of the stories that don't address these themes, and rearranging the remaining stories, Al-Shaykh nests the themes. The debate over who is less faithful becomes a vehicle by which Shaherazade, and other tale-tellers within her tale, can explore the nature of violence and forgiveness, and teach empathy to their audiences (in Sheherazade's case, to her murderous husband and king, Shahryar). A particular brilliance of this arrangement of the Tales is the way Al-Shaykh ends it: not with a decisive resolution, but with the start of what could be an infinite regress into indeterminacy, with the threat of arbitrary violence never banished, but perpetually held at bay by the power of redemptive storytelling, leaving room for love, lust, and friendship in the meantime.
    • 4/5
      My first experience with reading any version of Thousand Nights. The tales from the Dervishes and the Sisters were my favorites from this version. 4 stars
    • 5/5
      I'd been circling closer and closer to this book for a while. I'd never read any version of One Thousand and One Nights, and given my recent reading interests, it seemed inevitable that I do so, but what translation? Then I heard somewhere that Al-Shaykh, one of my favorite authors, had done a recent interpretation (along with another woman, I believe) for the stage. I was of course excited, but I pretty much detest reading plays, so I hadn't gone looking for it. When I saw this translation at the library, I had to check it out immediately.

      I had nearly no idea what to expect. Sinbad, Aladdin and his lamps, maybe. Not even The Wrath and The Dawn had really given me much idea of what to expect. At first, there was a lot about this text that I found jarring, largely in the framing story, with its murderous cuckolded kings, whose wives had dallied with strangely racially caricatured slaves. It took me a while to realize that the stories hadn't really been modernized, or sanitized, just translated, and joyously celebrated as the source of so many stories, so much tradition. And the stories seemed deliberately chosen to complicate any ideas of who is the fairer, weaker, more honest, or more lustful sex.

      When the stories ended I was sad, not because I disagreed with the way Al-Shaykh somewhat ambiguously concluded them, but just that I wanted more stories, all of the stories, for the book to go on and on.

      A wonderful book.
    • 4/5
      A very readable selection and arrangement of stories from Alf layla wa layla which after the standard introduction brings together both characters of and storytellers of the tales in the home of sisters who have had all sorts of misfortunes at the hands of husbands but who remain in the prime of life. The chosen stories are almost all centered more around lovers and spouses rather than powerful magic and stirring adventure.
    • 3/5
      This is not a children's book. Hanan al-Shaykh is one of the contemporary Arab world's most acclaimed writers. Although many Arabs apparently considered the framing of the story of Shaharazad a cliche', academics regarded it as a work of genius and a cornerstone of Arabic literature. The author of this book has chose 19 of the tales she views as shaping societies, showing how to live daily lives through tales filled with insights, moral and social rules and laws without the influence of religion. The stories are entertaining as well as enlightening.
    • 3/5
      Everybody knows about the Alf Layla wa Layla, how a king would marry a young woman each day and then have her executed the following morning, until Scheherazade asks to marry him and then spends the night telling stories but ending on a cliff-hanger – so he keeps her alive to find out how the story ends. Most people probably also know some of the 1001 Nights’ more popular stories, such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I actually have a copy of the Penguin Classic edition of Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, although I’ve yet to read it. I am, however, a fan of Al-Shaykh’s novels, ever since reading Only in London back in 2002. I believe Al-Shaykh’s version of the One Thousand and One Nights – and it’s only the first few stories of the first volume – started life as a play, but happily it doesn’t read like a play. One thing I hadn’t known until I read this book was how… bawdy the stories are. And how inter-nested. While Scheherazade opens the book, the story she tells contains characters who tell stories which contain characters who tell stories… I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. There are that many levels of framing narratives it can get a little confusing, but the individual tales are amusing and well-told. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      It is quite a nice novel. I really enjoyed reading it.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book of Arabian tales for grownups. The stories begin when King Shahrayar is cheated on by his wife. He vows to defeat the treachery of women by marrying a virgin every night, deflowering her, and killing her in the morning. Shahrazad, the daughter of the King's Vizier has a plan to end the bloodshed and she asks her father to marry her to the king. Every night after they copulate Shahrazad tells the King a story that is so fantastic that he decides not to kill her in the morning so he can hear the continuation the next night.Shahrazad's stories beget more stories. In this way story is spun from story into another story. A story will have six characters who will each have stories of their own. Each story is relative short and fits into the arc of a larger story. This is a book that you want to read through as much as possible in siting so you can keep track of everything that is going on. Some of the stories end up relating to other stories through a series of coincidences. The stories are tales full of violence, adventure, and romance. The treatment of women is far from politically correct. They are depicted as lustful whores who cheat on their husbands and are executed in gruesome ways while men get what they deserve in the end. A time or two women are even able to get the upper hand. A favorite was The Woman and her Five Lovers. The story of the Hunchback also had me laughing out loud. The stories are graphic, R rated, but not explicit in sexual detail.I only had a peripheral knowledge of the Arabian Nights Tales. The ones I was familiar with, Aladin and his Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves were not included. Sinbad the sailor was in a tale briefly at the end. It seems that some of the more well known stories were not part of the original translation and so were not included here. I enjoyed getting to know the lesser known stories and found them very entertaining. The translation made the tales very accessible and the book ends up on a cliffhanger. Since there are many more stories to tell I hope there will be a sequel.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      It's REALLY difficult to figure out just how to rate this. On one hand, the storytelling is masterful; it's bawdy and action-packed, full of demons and lovers and vengeance. Most of the stories end very poorly for everyone involved, which is kind of awesome. However, even though I've become relatively familiar with many of the Arabian Nights stories over the years and thought myself fairly prepared for any old-fashioned notions couched in these ancient tales, I had an incredibly hard time getting over the abject misogyny of many of the stories...so much so that I wasn't sure if I could continue on. I was so enthralled though, curious to see just how the plot might twist in each individual story. This kept me going. al-Shaykh's phrasing certainly helped make it more accessible, too--I may just have to check out more of her own work.