A review by iteechesinglish
One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Al-Shaykh

slow-paced

2.5

When I was in high school, my dad bought me a fancy embossed, unabridged copy of the "One Thousand and One Nights." I'm pretty sure he had no idea how much sex there was in those stories... It was a long book, and the translation was a bit old-fashioned, so I was excited to see this new, abridged translation. However, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought that since it was advertised as a "retelling," it would be an updated or modernized translation of the traditional stories, but to be honest I didn't notice much difference in style from my old copy. The stories themselves were interesting, but I was hoping for more of the adventure and fantasy stories and fewer of the romance themed ones. I think the author chose to focus on stories that addressed questions of gender and power, which is fine, just not quite what I was looking for.