I am planning to read through this whole book someday, I swear. But it's going to be a slow process. Here, in list form, are the reasons I may or may not finish The Arabian Nights.Reasons I May Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:-Scheherazade (or whichever of the twenty ways to spell her name you prefer) is kind of a badass genius. Since her father is the king's vizier, she gets exempted from said batshit crazy king's plan to marry and then kill every single available virgin in the city. But she...

As a child I had a small selection of tales from the Arabian nights in a hardback volume with a few gorgeous full colour plates. From this a couple of stories stayed with me, a Sultan travelling in disguise meets a man who having learnt of the Sultan's weakness for baby cucumbers was intent on trying to fool him out of a fortune in exchange for them, the man although greedy is also garrulous, tells the Sultan in disguise his wicked plans enabling the Sultan to turn the tables on him and trick hi...

What you thought was the Arabian Nights was more likely Richard Burton's bastardized, inflated 19th-century adaptation, which was as much about Richard Burton (and his weird ideas about sex) as it was about Arabia. Which is sortof neither here nor there; there is no canonical version of Arabian Nights anyway. It's just an umbrella term for, basically, all of the Middle East's favorite stories. And if the version that heavily influenced guys like Borges was Burton's, isn't Burton's version the on...

Masterfully written!The Sultan Schahriar had the most beautiful wife. But when he found her dishonoring him in the worst way he has no choice but to put her to death. To ensure that this blasphemy will never happen to him again every night he takes on a new bride and every morning the bride is ordered killed by the grand vizier. But one day the grand vizier's eldest daughter comes to him and tells him that she has a plan to get the sultan to stop murdering young women. But the catch is she has t...

For those 2 people who don't know, The Arabian Nights is sort of a collection of short stories told in the Arabian world, as I'm told it should be called, (which seems to include India and parts of China) waaaaaay back in the day. The framework of the story is about a sultan who caught his wife cheating on him. After he has her killed, he decides to take out his revenge on the entire sex, so he marries a different wife every day and has her killed the next morning. Scheherazade is the Grand Vizi...

Arabian Nights is one of the great literary works of all time but precautions need to be made if you want to read it to your kids. First off, there is a LOT of violence in the stories and a TON of sex. Don't be an idiot like me and start reading an unabridged copy to your kids or you will have to be explaining very early on why so and so killed his wife and imprisoned another...That being said, there are few works with as much imagination and wonder in them and taken in lighter doses, it is a be...

- Hey, do you like The Arabian nights?- Sure! Loved this book as a kid. My favourite story is Aladdin!- Um, it’s not in the original text and was written by a Frenchman Antoine Galland and then it was translated into Arabic and attempted to pass as an original text.- Hmm. Well, then Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Love it!- Um, same thing as with Aladdin…- Damn! Ok, I love Sinbad’s adventures! Ha!- You see, it was a cycle of independent stories from 17-18th centuries. They are not in the origina...

A Story to Save a Live The beauty of the stories and the poetry of the thought that most destructive demons can be tamed back with a few stories was fascinating to me even when I first saw the serialized version on tv. What I didn’t realized was that the stories Scheherazade, that great goddess of story tellers and inventor of cliff-hangings, told the king weren’t as random but had an order in themselves.This book has made Scherzade my favorite superhero – superhero was the word we use for o

The fairy tales from the Arabian world go from Aladdin to Sinbad. It's unique to dive into such a world - where flying carpets and magic lamps make the present better.

(Book 996 From 1001 Books) - Hezār Afsān = The Thousand and One Nights = The Arabian Nights, AnonymousThe work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the fram...

Ah, if only I could write like the late Sir Richard Burton! Normally I dislike translations, but to refuse to read The Arabian Nights on those grounds would be like refusing to read the Bible. I love parodying people's styles, and I have tried my utmost to parody Burton convincingly, but I can't do it. He's too clever. He has taken this unique book, a miraculous survival from the most ancient antiquity, and he has created a unique language to make it accessible to us: the backbone is a kind of S...

What the hell did I just read?!These were some crazy stories that don't really resemble the shiny cleaned-up versions of the tales we hear today.Loved it! That's the best part of reading stuff like this - finding out how batshit things were back in the day.So while the stories weren't particularly good, there were moments of pure hilarity that made it all worthwhile. For example, Sinbad. Really boring for an adventure story. Just sort of nonsensical that he keeps getting on a boat. Dude, really...

In Urdu,this is called Alif Laila.These are familiar stories which enthralled me in my childhood.Also adapted as countless TV episodes and movies.Fondly recall Pakistan television's series Alif Laila from the 1980s,which though made on a shoestring budget was great fun.King Sheharyar takes a new wife each day and executes her the next day.The beautiful Sheherzade agrees to be his wife to stop him.She tells him a story,and then another and still another.The king is so engrossed that he does not k...

I really need a 2.5 stars option, though I would end up using it on three-fourths of everything. As a generic, I can neither recommend nor disavow this book.Okay so the beloved Arabian Nights, tales from a thousand and one nights. I should start with what this is NOT. This is not a linear story about a princess telling stories to a king. This is not a children's read involving genies, magic, and cyclopi (I refuse to spell this any other way, no matter the red line beneath it). This IS a collecti...

When I was a little girl my grandmother gave me a big, blue, cloth bound edition of this book. It had the most exquisite coloured plates protected by tissue paper interleaved with the printed sheets. It was the perfect storybook for a bookish, fanciful child living in an abusive home. I spent a year reading this book. Every night I would read it and disappear from all the fear and unpleasantness around me into this realm of people in exotic clothes who could do magic. I cherished the book. I too...

When I first read One Thousand and One Nights I was literally put under the book’s spell – charmed, enchanted and bewitched. It isn’t just magic of fairytales. It is first of all magic of the oriental world. And of course I was at once mesmerized with the incredible frame tale of Shahryar and Scheherazade.Nowhere is so much magic as in Arabian Nights: magical word opening the cave door: “‘Open, Sesame!’ And forthwith appeared a wide doorway in the face of the rock. The robbers went in, and last

Oh, the wonders of literature! While reading this book I could not help but sing the songs or hum the tunes associated with the tales: ♪♫♪ A whole new worldA new fantastic point of viewNo one to tell us noOr where to goOr say we're only dreaming ♪♫♪ I grew up with mostly Filipino komiks around me. Only my father loved reading books and we had very few (compared to what I have now) classics and contemporary books at home. My parents did not read to me when I was young. Those are the reasons why

This edition is a translation of the first 271 nights from the "1001 Nights" cycle. One of my favorite aspects of this work is the role of Shahrazad. While many people discuss that she is telling the stories to save her own life, what people fail to recognize many times is that, really, she volunteers to be placed in the position in order to save her kingdom. She's a great literary heroine--saving the world through storytelling. It also provides a great lens into a world that today is depicted i...

A review is pointless for this book. It’s a classic and everyone should read it. Those who are complaining about how women are treated in the stories should read it more carefully and should pay attention also when it was first written. Reading this edition, two things amazed me: how well I remember all the stories, taking into consideration that last time I read them was more than 20 years ago and second, how accurate the Romanian translation I read is compared to this one. As for this edition,...