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mykreeve 's review for:
Arabian Nights
by Muhsin Mahdi, Anonymous
The Arabian Nights were very enjoyable and, for the most part, much dirtier than I'd anticipated. There are demons galore, and stories of people being carried around by eagles, and turning into dogs, and beating themselves, and beating their wives, and having their eyes put out, and beating their wives... actually, there's a terrifyingly large amount of spousal abuse in the stories.
I wouldn't really look to the stories as a good source of morality tales - being good means you're just as likely to end up penniless as being ruthlessly evil... admittedly, the ruthlessly evil characters are slightly more likely to end up as penniless cows... but that's by the by.
The real problem, and it is a major problem, is that the stories are really quite repetitive. They're tremendous fun - but you can't really read more than four or five of them before needing a break. That's largely why it took me such a tremendously long period of time to get through. Nonetheless, if you either have a longer attention span than me, or are prepared to regularly pick the book up and put it down again, then you'll love it.
Having said that, it can sometimes be tricky to put the book down - there are lots of stories nested within other stories. The tale of the forty-seventh night starts as follows:
"It is related, O King, that the second dervish said to the girl that he told the demon:"
The "Tale of the Envious and the Envied" is nested within the "Second Dervish's Tale" which sits within the incredibly lengthy "Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies". Fortunately, at the start of each 'night', Scheherazade summarises where we are in the storytelling - making it reasonably easy to keep track of.
It's also worth mentioning that this first volume of tales from the Arabian Nights by Everyman doesn't contain the Arabian Nights stories that everyone's familiar with - namely Sindbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin. Those are reserved for the much slimmer second volume. That's not to say that book one is just the second-rate Nights stories - only that they're not ones particularly known outside the near East. In particular, the story of how Scheherazade came to be telling the tales of the 1,001 nights is well worth a look.
I wouldn't really look to the stories as a good source of morality tales - being good means you're just as likely to end up penniless as being ruthlessly evil... admittedly, the ruthlessly evil characters are slightly more likely to end up as penniless cows... but that's by the by.
The real problem, and it is a major problem, is that the stories are really quite repetitive. They're tremendous fun - but you can't really read more than four or five of them before needing a break. That's largely why it took me such a tremendously long period of time to get through. Nonetheless, if you either have a longer attention span than me, or are prepared to regularly pick the book up and put it down again, then you'll love it.
Having said that, it can sometimes be tricky to put the book down - there are lots of stories nested within other stories. The tale of the forty-seventh night starts as follows:
"It is related, O King, that the second dervish said to the girl that he told the demon:"
The "Tale of the Envious and the Envied" is nested within the "Second Dervish's Tale" which sits within the incredibly lengthy "Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies". Fortunately, at the start of each 'night', Scheherazade summarises where we are in the storytelling - making it reasonably easy to keep track of.
It's also worth mentioning that this first volume of tales from the Arabian Nights by Everyman doesn't contain the Arabian Nights stories that everyone's familiar with - namely Sindbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin. Those are reserved for the much slimmer second volume. That's not to say that book one is just the second-rate Nights stories - only that they're not ones particularly known outside the near East. In particular, the story of how Scheherazade came to be telling the tales of the 1,001 nights is well worth a look.