One Thousand and One Nights: A Retelling

by Hanan al-Shaykh, Mary Gaitskill (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307948991
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/03/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	211,437
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Hanan al-Shaykh, an award-winning journalist, novelist, and playwright, is the author of the short story collection I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops; the novels The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, and Only in London; and a memoir about her mother, The Locust and the Bird. She was raised in Beirut, educated in Cairo, and lives in London.

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Preface
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "One Thousand and One Nights"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Hanan al-Shaykh.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise from the UK for One Thousand and One Nights:
 
“Al-Shaykh’s One Thousand and One Nights is a treasure-box of stories.”
 —The Independent (London)
 
“Magical. . . . Bursting with jinnis and mischief.”
—Donna Tartt, The Times (London)
 
“[F]or grown-ups interested in rediscovering the One Thousand and One Nights in all its bawdy, violent glory. It is captivating.”
—Daily Mail (London)
 
“[A]n uplifting read, precisely because [the stories] are so fantastical and transport the reader, by flying carpet, to lands filled with jinnis, princes and concubines, and also of people making contact across divides. Some of them are surprisingly erotic. Bedtime reading, for sure.”
—Time Out (London)
 
“Hanan Al-Shaykh’s vivid ‘reimagining’ of the One Thousand and One Nights is a treat and a trap for story lovers. Like a contemporary Shahrazad, Al-Shaykh has rendered nineteen little masterpieces into a wondrously warm, ribald and hilarious concoction, reminding us of how bang up to date these stories can be.”
—Hanif Kureishi, The Guardian (London)
 
“A brutal, bawdy, earthy and humorous narrative where the real world and the supernatural collide…. Al-Shaykh’s stories are no less beguiling than their name suggests.”
—Metro (London)

Editorial Reviews

Magical. . . . Bursting with jinnis and mischief.”
—Donna Tartt, The Times (London)

“[al-Shaykh] brings the modern fiction writer’s gift for psychological complexity to the rich-but-streamlined quality of the originals. . . . Read through knowing you’re getting the very best of The Arabian Nights.”
—The Atlantic

“Spellbinding.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“al-Shaykh performs a great service in retelling [the Arabian Nights]. . . . [She] has shifted the camera angles, as it were, and trained the spotlight on the characters. . . . We get more of the essence of these stories, their anarchic humor and cheerful sadism.”
—NPR

“A treat and a trap for story lovers. Like a contemporary Shahrazad, al-Shaykh has rendered 19 little masterpieces into a wondrously warm, ribald and hilarious concoction.”
—Hanif Kureishi, The Guardian (London)

From the Publisher

For this retelling of the classic Arabic tales, Beirut-born al-Shaykh translated 19 of the originals and, beginning with its traditional frame story, embeds narrative within narrative to create a striking new version. To counter "the cunning and deceit of women," King Shahrayar beds a new wife each night only to have her killed in the morning. But his vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, vows to save the kingdom's girls by marrying the king and then telling him stories that so enthrall him that he can't kill her. From that opening, the stories build and fold in on themselves until we find ourselves back at the beginning. These stories pulse with sex, magic, and moral ambiguities; while terrible violence underscores moments of pure beauty. Guests are invited into a home only to encounter terrible cruelty; a woman becomes king so she can be a beacon for her lost love; a man plucks his eye for the pain he caused his family. Why retread such well-worn territory? In her foreword al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) speaks of rediscovering her own Arab roots while recognizing the power these ancient women held. Suprising and delightful, al-Shaykh's masterful work has restored the tale to contemporary relevance. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Lebanese novelist al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) takes the hundreds of stories that make up the traditional One Thousand and One Nights and with concision pares them down to 19. Focusing on tales that expose misogyny—of men who kill their wives and lovers, who injure them, or who leave them for dead—al-Shaykh is interested in how women grapple with a society that is stacked against them. Gone are Aladdin, Ali Baba, and even much of Sinbad, but what remains is a haunting collection of stories about women who, if not always heroic, are resilient, funny, sexual, and, above all, smart. Anchored by two central framing narratives, the tales lead into one another like a set of matryoshka dolls. The beautiful language is deceptively simple: readers are in danger of being lulled into marathon reading sessions. VERDICT It's no wonder al-Shaykh identifies with Shahrazad; they are very much the same. This retelling will find an eager audience in readers who love folktales, especially those with a feminist slant. Not for the faint but for lovers of true heart, these stories are gory, lusty, and very, very good. [See Author Q&A, LJ Reviews, ow.ly/kzWHL].—Molly McArdle, Library Journal

Library Journal

Elegant, pointed retelling of the classic of medieval Arabian literature by Lebanese novelist and journalist al-Shaykh (The Locust and the Bird, 2009, etc.). As Sir Richard Burton well knew, the tales that Scheherazade spun in order to keep from having her sultan husband chop off her head were full of erotic moments, explicit and implicit alike. Denatured into fables for children, the tales of Ali Baba, magical caves, flying carpets and Sindbad the sailor lost any such erotic possibilities, which al-Shaykh very gamely restores with the unmistakable conjuring of "[t]he stick, the thing, the pigeon, the panther, the shish kebab, the cock" and dizzying tales of noblewomen ravished by African slaves--in short, the sort of things that ought to find these once-tame stories a whole new audience. It's not just the sex, but also the sexual violence and mistrust that run like a swift current below the stories. Says one sorrowful shah to his brother early on, "I caught my wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys in her quarters before I set out to come to you. My anger took control and I avenged myself by slaying both of them and hurling their bodies in a trench, like two dead cockroaches." It would take an accomplished psychotherapist and dream interpreter to plumb the depths of what al-Shaykh reveals of the relations, as fraught as any in Faulkner, of cloistered women and fearful men and those ever-watchful black slaves. Yet some of what the Arabian storytellers unleashed on their audiences, if we are to trust these versions, is utterly unveiled, as when a young woman tells her sisters, "I have learned a lesson: there is little that is good in marriage." Readers of a nostalgic bent will be pleased to discover Sindbad in these pages, though a different one from the Sindbad of their youth. As a storyteller reporting Sindbad's very own account of his adventures relates, "at times I was so terrified that I nearly shat myself." A lovely book, and a wonderful revisiting of tales that, told once again, are meant to inspire--well, if not piety, at least more humane behavior toward our fellow adventurers.

Kirkus Reviews