Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights

by Paulo Lemos Horta

Overview

“A fascinating work of cultural and literary history . . . An insightful examination of [the Arabian Nights] and the fraught complexities of translation.” —Kirkus Reviews

Although many of its stories originated centuries ago in the Middle East, the Arabian Nights is regarded as a classic of world literature by virtue of the seminal French and English translations produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Supporting the suspicion that the story collection is more Parisian than Persian, some of its most famous tales, including the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba, appear nowhere in the original sources. Yet as befits a world where magic lamps may conceal a jinni and fabulous treasures lie just beyond secret doors, the truth of the Arabian Nights is richer than standard criticism suggests.

“Marvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent and original work of literary scholarship.” —Robert Irwin, Literary Review

“This fine book . . . cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the Arabian Nights, serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories.” —Charles Shafaieh, Wall Street Journal

“Intelligent and engrossing . . . The great merit of Horta’s book is that its interest always lies in the story of the story, in mapping out the complex network of the translators, editors and travellers behind the Arabian Nights, in ways that enrich our sense of this remarkable text.” —Shahidha Bari, Times Higher Education

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674973770
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	374
Sales rank:	576,664
File size:	52 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Paulo Lemos Horta is Assistant Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Copyright Contents A Note on Terminology Introduction Chapter 1. The Storyteller and the Sultan of France Chapter 2. Marvellous Thieves Chapter 3. The Empire of English Chapter 4. The Magician’s Interpreter Chapter 5. The Wiles of Women Chapter 6. Stealing with Style Chapter 7. The False Caliph Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index

Editorial Reviews

11/14/2016
In this enchanting work, Horta, an assistant professor of literature at New York University Abu Dhabi, focuses on the European translations of The Arabian Nights that brought these Middle Eastern tales to a wide western audience. Horta introduces readers to the complexities of translation, showing how “the tales themselves are intertwined with the lives and ambitions of the tellers.” In the 18th century, Frenchman Antoine Galland relied on a talented storyteller from Aleppo, Hanna Diyab, who recounted tales, such as “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” that Galland was the first to include in his version. English translators in the 19th century included Henry Torrens, a linguist in colonial India who captured the stories’ sensuality and poetry; Edward Lane, a “Victorian empiricist” and scholar living in Cairo, who was helped by an Ottoman Scot and an Egyptian bookseller; pre-Raphaelite poet John Payne; and Richard Burton, a famed traveler who wove his own pilgrimage to Mecca into the tales and borrowed heavily from Payne’s version. Horta pays particular attention to the differing ways the translators handled a foreign culture’s nuances, including the roles of women. His fascinating search for the origins of The Arabian Nights as it exists today reveals a multitude of storytellers nearly as colorful as Sinbad or Aladdin. (Jan.) This review has been updated to reflect that the author is female, not male.

Publishers Weekly

[A] vivid, intellectually lively and revelatory book…The real point about this clever book is that many of the things we think about modernity—let alone postmodernity—have already happened. Postmodernism says that the book is always fluid; no text shows this as clearly as Arabian Nights. There can be no perfect version. It shows that authors are also collaborators, translators, plagiarists, elusive.

Scotland on Sunday - Stuart Kelly

Drawing on resources that include the Vatican Library, [Marvellous Thieves] offers some fascinating revelations about the translation efforts that turned the Arabian Nights—also known as One Thousand and One Nights—into the world’s inheritance…Horta’s book has come out at a time when geopolitical developments give it added poignancy. The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit, and the rise of far­-right parties in Europe have signaled a surging antipathy towards the idea of an interconnected world…In this context, reading Marvellous Thieves is a reminder of the blessings that can come from global commerce and communion.

Celia Wren

This fine book…cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the Arabian Nights, serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories.

Wall Street Journal - Charles Shafaieh

A work of meticulous cultural and literary history…This is a fascinating story of the many voices that narrated, authored, retold, embellished and translated the stories of Scheherazade; it is also an exploration into how stories travel.

The Hindu - Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta

Marvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent, and original work of literary scholarship.

Literary Review - Robert Irwin

Intelligent and engrossing…The great merit of Horta’s book is that its interest always lies in the story of the story, in mapping out the complex network of the translators, editors and travellers behind the Arabian Nights, in ways that enrich our sense of this remarkable text.

Times Higher Education - Shahidha Bari

A nimble study of the Arabian Nights and its provenance.

New Yorker - Anthony Lane

In writing a biography of 200 years of Nights’ translation, with its multiplicity of voices, sources, contexts and prejudices, Horta has breathed life into another great story to emerge from the Thousand and One Nights.

The National - Clare Dight

Paulo Horta has uncovered a mass of fresh evidence about key figures in the making of the Arabian Nights and communicates his startling findings with a storyteller’s verve, raising many fascinating issues about the interplay of invention, imitation, translation, and plagiarism, and probing the vexed effects of the imperial gaze and the acquisition of local expertise and languages. In Marvellous Thieves, Paulo Horta has written a highly entertaining, attentive, and scholarly work of literary detection.

Marina Warner

Horta takes the reader across empires and trade routes to discover the hidden networks of textual transmission which produced the Arabian Nights…Horta's multi-lingual research and his rich narrative style make for exciting reading.

The Telegraph (Calcutta) - Sujaan Mukherjee

Marvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent, and original work of literary scholarship.--Robert Irwin "Literary Review"

[A] vivid, intellectually lively and revelatory book...The real point about this clever book is that many of the things we think about modernity--let alone postmodernity--have already happened. Postmodernism says that the book is always fluid; no text shows this as clearly as Arabian Nights. There can be no perfect version. It shows that authors are also collaborators, translators, plagiarists, elusive.--Stuart Kelly "Scotland on Sunday"

[In] this well-researched and highly engaging work, readers will uncover the origins of the Arabian Nights as it exists today in the West. This work is a major contribution to the study of the complexities inherent in translating such a masterpiece.--Ali Houissa "Library Journal (starred review)"

A fascinating work of cultural and literary history...An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

A nimble study of the Arabian Nights and its provenance.--Anthony Lane "New Yorker" (6/3/2019 12:00:00 AM)

A work of meticulous cultural and literary history...This is a fascinating story of the many voices that narrated, authored, retold, embellished and translated the stories of Scheherazade; it is also an exploration into how stories travel.--Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta "The Hindu"

Drawing on resources that include the Vatican Library, [Marvellous Thieves] offers some fascinating revelations about the translation efforts that turned the Arabian Nights--also known as One Thousand and One Nights--into the world's inheritance...Horta's book has come out at a time when geopolitical developments give it added poignancy. The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit, and the rise of far--right parties in Europe have signaled a surging antipathy towards the idea of an interconnected world...In this context, reading Marvellous Thieves is a reminder of the blessings that can come from global commerce and communion.--Celia Wren "Commonweal"

Horta takes the reader across empires and trade routes to discover the hidden networks of textual transmission which produced the Arabian Nights...Horta's multi-lingual research and his rich narrative style make for exciting reading.--Sujaan Mukherjee "The Telegraph (Calcutta)"

In this enchanting work, Horta focuses on the European translations of The Arabian Nights that brought these Middle Eastern tales to a wide western audience...His fascinating search for the origins of The Arabian Nights as it exists today reveals a multitude of storytellers nearly as colorful as Sinbad or Aladdin.-- "Publishers Weekly"

In writing a biography of 200 years of Nights' translation, with its multiplicity of voices, sources, contexts and prejudices, Horta has breathed life into another great story to emerge from the Thousand and One Nights.--Clare Dight "The National"

Intelligent and engrossing...The great merit of Horta's book is that its interest always lies in the story of the story, in mapping out the complex network of the translators, editors and travellers behind the Arabian Nights, in ways that enrich our sense of this remarkable text.--Shahidha Bari "Times Higher Education"

This fine book...cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the Arabian Nights, serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories.--Charles Shafaieh "Wall Street Journal"

Paulo Horta has uncovered a mass of fresh evidence about key figures in the making of the Arabian Nights and communicates his startling findings with a storyteller's verve, raising many fascinating issues about the interplay of invention, imitation, translation, and plagiarism, and probing the vexed effects of the imperial gaze and the acquisition of local expertise and languages. In Marvellous Thieves, Paulo Horta has written a highly entertaining, attentive, and scholarly work of literary detection.--Marina Warner, author of Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2017
The Arabian Nights originated many centuries ago in regions of the Near East, Central, and South Asia. While most scholars agree it was a composite, frame story collected over time based largely on folk tales, European translations included more stories that were not in the original Arabic versions and may well have been the creation of translators and interpreters. For example, "Aladdin's Lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" appeared first in Antoine Galland's French translation. Horta (literature, New York Univ. Abu Dhabi) focuses on "new" material added by European translators, who variously recast the original stories. While exploring the literary context in which imitation, invention, forgery, and plagiarism flourished, the author pays particular attention to myriad ways cultural nuances had been handled in the tales. In the seven chapters of this well-researched and highly engaging work, readers will uncover the origins of the Arabian Nights as it exists today in the West. This work is a major contribution to the study of the complexities inherent in translating such a masterpiece. VERDICT Horta's scholarly, albeit witty and entertaining analysis and style, will have wide appeal and particularly interest scholars and students of literature.—Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY

Library Journal

2016-10-20
From its origin, the Thousand and One Nights has been frequently translated, embellished, and transformed.In his debut book, a fascinating work of cultural and literary history, Horta (Literature/New York Univ. Abu Dhabi) investigates the transmutations of the influential collection of Arabic tales, purportedly invented by Shahrazad to distract her husband, King Shahriyar, from murdering young women in his kingdom. In the second half of the eighth century C.E., Horta asserts, the collection was first translated from Persian into Arabic; since then, additional stories have been added by Arabic and European translators, including the familiar "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp." "The Thousand and One Nights," writes the author, "must be understood not as a singular work but as an array of texts" that underwent constant interaction with other cultures, which incorporated into the collection "love stories, trickster tales, historical epics, tales of the supernatural, animal fables, and tales of heroic journeys to foreign lands." Eventually, it became "one of the key texts in the emergence of world literature in French and English." Horta focuses on several significant translators: Antoine Galland, the first French translator of the tales; Pre-Raphaelite poet John Payne; British Orientalist Edward William Lane; and the intrepid explorer Richard Francis Burton, who disguised himself as a Muslim pilgrim to travel to Mecca and Medina in 1853. Besides offering a close reading of the translations, Horta draws on a memoir by Diyab, a Syrian traveler who told the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba to Galland; Lane's notebooks and correspondence; and drafts of Burton's translation. These sources reveal "partnerships and rivalries" that shaped each translator's text. In investigating Diyab's influence, for example, Horta notes, "the context of amorality and violence that characterized Diyad's travels survives in these tales even after Galland's stylish adaptation of the stories to meet French expectations of an Oriental tale." An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation.

Kirkus Reviews