The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Complete

Every night for a thousand and one nights, a woman spins tales to stay alive. That's the spellbinding premise at the heart of these ancient stories: Scheherazade, newly wed to a king who executes each wife at dawn, holds his attention through the power of narrative itself, weaving tales within tales, cliffhangers into cliffhangers, until saving her own neck becomes secondary to the sheer compulsion of the story being told. The collection bursts open from there into a world of all-powerful genies trapped in bottles, thief brothers who cry "Open Sesame" to unlock caverns of treasure, mischievous sorcerers, and princesses both enchanted and enchanting. But look beneath the magic carpets and flying carpets and you'll find something earthier: sharp social criticism, ribald comedy, and intimate glimpses of medieval Islamic daily life. These are the stories that gave Aladdin and Ali Baba to the world, that influenced everyone from Voltaire to Borges, that proved storytelling itself might be the most potent magic there is.