One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling
SynopsisPlot
Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across the Arab world, the mesmerizing stories of One Thousand and One Nights are related by the beautiful, young Shahrazad as she attempts to delay her execution. Retold in modern English by the acclaimed Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, here are stories of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Bringing together nineteen classic tales, in these pages, al-Shaykh weaves an utterly intoxicating collection, rich with humor, violence, and romance.
Story
About this book
The stories known collectively as One Thousand and One Nights have traveled across centuries and continents, carrying traces of Indian, Persian, and Arab storytelling traditions. At their center is Shahrazad, a young woman who tells tale after tale to a king who has vowed to execute each new bride at dawn. Her survival depends entirely on her ability to keep the king listening, night after night, story within story.
Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh selects nineteen of these tales and renders them in contemporary English. The collection moves between the everyday and the supernatural, touching on love, punishment, poverty, wealth, and the unpredictable workings of fate. Al-Shaykh preserves the humor and sensuality found in the older material while giving the language a directness suited to modern readers. Shahrazad's own cleverness and composure remain a visible thread connecting the separate stories.
The frame narrative, in which storytelling itself becomes a means of staying alive, gives the book an unusual structural tension. Each tale Shahrazad offers must be compelling enough to earn another night. That pressure shapes not only the content of the stories but their pacing and the way one narrative opens into the next.
