The Arabian Nights Entertainments
It's been called The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, One Thousand and One Nights, etc., but the framework is generally the same: a Persian king discovers his wife is cheating, so, having determined that all women are unfaithful, he decides to marry a virgin every day and have her killed by the next. After a while the kingdom is running low on virgins, so the cunning Scheherazade volunteers to marry the king, and to keep her own head she tells him a new thrilling tale every night. He's so captivated by the stories that he doesn't realize it's a trick. So...Scheherazade is like the original Dan Brown.
The 1001 stories themselves were compiled over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. Some versions only contain a few hundred stories, while others have the full 1000. The Arabian Nights is like a big bucket of folk tales. Dig in!
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Faith Sullivan
February 13, 2013
Hey! This is Sir Richard Francis Burton's work. Burton gathered these tales, translating them into twenty-four languages, and then publishing them with insightful endnotes throughout. He completed these stories in the later part of his life--somewhere around 1885-1888, but most definitely prior to 1890 since this was the year that he died and he was busy completing The Sensual Garden, The Kama Sutra, and an autobiography of his own disturbingly fascinating life. The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights are still wonderfully engrossing and mystically enchanting--critical reading for all.
Shuddhasattwa Ghosh
December 02, 2012
Awsome and romatic and mysterious
Jake Mroczenski
November 05, 2012
Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooks goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood
Waseem Arif
November 04, 2012
Great literature of arabic. It is translated almost in all known languages
Narisa Na Pattalung
April 08, 2012
great techniques of writing and plot, good moral lessons , tons of entertaining stories !!
Atul Rane
March 15, 2012
Good stories tied with one thread...
Charles Andoh
February 25, 2012
It was a very good read, containing a lot of unheard of stories. The stories show that good will always prevail over evil.