Book Description
Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance,
The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.
This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download Description
The Complete Arabian Nights in a single edition
Customer Reviews:
good.......2007-06-13
condition of book is really good, but its dimensions are smaller than i expected.
Excellent.......2006-11-02
Richard Burton's narration is fantastic, the accompanying music adds to the mood, and the selection of tales is also good.
Universal, Timeless Storytelling.......2006-09-25
The Arabian Nights: Tales from A Thousand and One Nights -translated by Sir Richard F. Burton
Though the collection is incomplete (this edition contains only the "most famous and representative" tales from the entirety), the compendium outshines any expectation or foreknowledge of the stories and is choc with the marvelous wit of ancient Arabian storytelling. The stories have an underbidding theme all alike, good is good and evil is evil, Allah is all and always and man and manhood will be sundered, for without fail comes with the tail of every tale "the Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies, the Plunderer of palaces, and the Garnerer of graves." Reminding sundry-reader that, despite diamond caches and throes of love, all is vanity of vanity, and only the story will exist for aught. The structure of each of these stories is thematically similar: a poor man happens on a souterrain of riches, he is espied by someone of evil, foul play ensues, a moon of moons of a beauty entrances one and all, a jinn sneaks out of a signet ring, the enemy is bewitched, and the hero is consummated with love and gold. Or, the reverse. Or, the inverse. But what is unique to each of these stories is the complete freedom of happenstance. A man fishing in a pond nets a monkey. A marooned sailor flies with a giant bird to freedom. A man blind in one eye runs into another blind in one eye and they run into another blind in one eye. Ali-Babba overhears an eponymous password to a storehouse of plunder. Everything and anything goes. As well with the language, in "fairest favour and formous form," Sir Burton spares no joyance of neologism coined, alliteration aligned or rhyme rhymed. The text is bedight with proper consciousness of Shaharazad, "for interest fails in twice told tales," and "Words cannot undo the done," as we are gently and thematically reminded of the bookends: the murderous king and the maiden, Shaharazad's "fictitious" fight for survival. The stories that have so obviously leaked into our culture, Aladdin, Ali-Babba and the Forty Thieves, are so much richer, more profound, and less coddling than our cartooned interpretations (as is also the case with the Grimm and Andersen tales). In the end, it is obvious that nor King nor author nor Queen is the hero. None save the stories themselves and the love of the telling will live on.
Not for everybody...........2006-01-04
If you are looking for a book, where you can read and enjoy the stories... this is not for you. The way it is written, is so difficult to understand and there is no continuos flow in the book, which will make you so bored that you just want to stop reading.
A Children's Book not for Children-- Especially the PC Ones.......2005-11-24
The Nights were, until a week or so ago, another classic I wanted to dip into.
I somehow missed The Nights in my formal literary education.
It violates just about every left-wing-taboo.
Reading the Nights for pleasure, with Burton's help one commits the cardinal sins of Colonialism and Orientalism.
The tales themselves are consistently religious, sexist, racist, and xenophobic.
Before buying, I too knew the 'frame' for the tales: 'Shahrazade the clever woman tells stories to the King so he won't behead her', which is a rather reductive, feelgood soundbyte, perhaps, since what you don't hear is that the King has his beef with women because he and his brother both caught their wives in flagrante delicto with African slaves; about which Burton gives a useful gloss about said party's particular anatomical superiorty, replete with Burton's own first-hand real-world observations concerning this useful fact.
All that said, it's indeed easy to feel like the forgetful King, since Shahrazade's tales are not just tales, but tales within tales within tales. Her enchanting stories center on multiple characters, each with an oddball fate, each with their own uncanny stories to tell;and there are often characters in those stories that have stories. It's like a funhouse full of mirrors; but it's pleasant to get lost, as your consciousness of what part of Shahrazade's labrynth you're in falls away. Like the King, you just give in and enjoy the strange experience, and Shahrazad makes it to yet another dawn. The stories, in Burton's translation, read with a real Medieval romance kind of flavor, which I assume is endemic to the Nights and the period, and is not strictly representative of Burton's English tastes, despite his choice of peculiarly English diction.
The book itself is handsome and durable, like the rest of the Modern Library paperbacks. As a previoius reviewer has noted, this particular text is not a complete Nights. The Editor has chosen 'representative' tales to put in this collection.
The stories themselves are charming, but perhaps their palpable repetitiveness (even in a cherry-picked and abridged selection) slubbers the gloss of the supposed inventiveness of the remaining 975 or so stories.
A must for a serious reader who likes fresh air while they thumb their nose at Puritans.
Customer Reviews:
A Fantastical World To Be Lived Through These Pages.......2007-06-21
A collection of tales mostly of Persian, Indian, and Egyptian origin. Legend has it that Shahrazad, to prolong her life, told these tales to the king each night over 1,001 nights. In the end, the king let her lived as he had fallen in love with her. What a delightful legend!
In reality, these tales are most likely a collection that were handed down over time very much like folk tales in our Western world. They are fantastical stories in many cases involving jinnees and magical islands and far off lands and mysterious animals and beautiful women and enchanted lamps and....well, it goes on and on! There are some common themes: poor, common men become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams and eventually become kings, women are (usually) portrayed as deceitful and conniving, and at the center is religion.
An entertaining and fascinating book for children and adults, although there are some stories that might need to be monitored by adults for children - the stories can be a little bawdy! But there are so many good ones here, such as Sindbad and his voyages and Aladin. However, the other stories are just as entertaining, too, such as the hilarious Historical Fart and introspective The Dream. I'm normally not a fan of fantasy fiction, but these are easy to read and easy to follow and allow the read to let their imagination just go to the four winds. Wonderful book!
A lifetime of entertaining stories.......2005-04-28
What a great book. These stories are extremely old from places such as Persia and India with a mostly arabic influence. The introduction gives great historical insight about the various tales. Of all the translated versions of these classic stories, and what was probably much more complicated original prose, I find Mr Dawood's translations simple and fun to read. The stories are rich with adventure and fantasy. Mr Dawood does an excellent job of keeping the stories down-to-earth and entertaining. Those who enjoy cryptic, esoteric literature will enjoy losing themselves in the intertwining stories of this book. With a simplistic style of story-telling, it is still intricate enough to keep one immersed. Those who already enjoy simple stories will be intrigued by the unique storylines and plots. For young, impressionable readers, the tales have no religious overtones or underlying political agenda and women are revered and respected. I first read this book when I was 12, and continue to enjoy and re-read the stories well into adulthood.
Fantastic Tales.......2002-06-14
This book is a selection of the choicest tales from the Thousand and One Nights. The translator, N.J. Dawood, also translated the Koran for the Penguin Classics series. Dawood explains in the introduction that the first of these tales appeared in a written form around 850 C.E., in a book called, "A Thousand Legends." More tales, of lesser quality, were added over the years until an anonymous editor in Cairo finally codified them in the 18th century. A French version of some of the stories appeared in the 17th century, and was followed by several English versions in the 19th century; the best known adaptation came from Sir Richard Burton, in 10 volumes. The stories are a mix of Arabic, Persian, and Indian tales and appear to have been written in response to classical Arabic literature. The Arabs do not consider them part of the classic canon, and after reading these stories, I can see why. They are aggressive and highly sexualized, and are loaded with sorcery, fantasy, and criticism of authority figures.
Whatever their origins and means of transmission, these are excellent and entertaining stories. I cannot think of one tale in this selection that I did not like. Included in the book is the instantly recognizable Aladdin story, as well as the Sinbad voyages. Other tales are just as interesting: "The Tale of the Hunchback," "The Tale of Judar and his Brothers," "The Porter and the Three Girls of Baghdad," and many others. Many of these stories are cycles; they have stories within stories, as characters in one story tell their own stories. At the end of the cycle, the story is cleverly wrapped up, usually with a happy ending. I do not think I need to go into detail about Aladdin or Sinbad, except to say that I was surprised to see Aladdin described as Chinese. Providing details to these stories would be useless anyway because they are so detailed as to be impervious to summary.
There is no doubt that many of these stories started as oral stories, and retained that shape into the written versions. The best example is the Sinbad cycle. All of the stories in this cycle are framed in the same way. This repetition made it easier to memorize the stories, or at least the basic outline. A good storyteller could take the frame and fill in the blanks with whatever his heart desired. You often see this kind of writing in the Bible.
Social roles and class play a large part in these stories. Women are presented as wily and dangerous, but not always. Several stories show men trying to pull fast ones on the ladies, with the results much to the detriment of the men. Many stories show how the high and mighty come crashing down, or how the lowly are elevated to great status. These movements are attributed to the grace or condemnation of Allah, and the characters all act out their movements with Allah close by.
You will not go wrong with this book. These are immensely entertaining stories for both children and adults, although you might want to find a toned down version for the kiddies. Why? I am thinking about the tale where a man and some women play "name that body part." My only criticism of this version is that the tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" is absent. I have no idea why it is missing, but the book loses one star for this grave omission.
Enjoyable easy reading to take you away to fantasy land........2001-03-27
This book is translated by a person named N.J. Darwood. It's simply wonderful. The tales involved are tales of the Persian Gulf, of Bagdhad, Arabia, and tales that we as adults should revisit for some enjoyable light reading that will make us smile and wonder at the old folklore of the Arabian Peninsula. Sinbad the Sailor is in there, as is Aladdin in it's original form, and the story begins of a king who is so upset by his wife's unfaithfulness that he will now only accept virgins for one night and then have them killed. A smart virgin begins her night with the infamous king by telling him stories, and she so fascinates him and enthralls him with her tales that the tales turn into folklore for readers of the ages. I won't tell you what happens in the end to the virgin princess, but you will find humor, enchantment, wisdom and fantasy for those times when stress becomes a factor in your life. I highly recommend the tale of "The Historic Fart" as a both funny and inspiring tale of human nature. Please buy this book and remember to become a nine -12 year old again as you read with curiosity and wonder at the fabulous enchanting, lively stories. I was beginning to wish my children were a bit younger so I could read these to them. Any child would enjoy these stories, and any adult will find them simply relaxing and a reflection of medieval Islam.
Timeless stories for all!.......2001-01-03
The stories in the Thousand and One Nights never seem to grow old and captivate readers, both young and old. Dawood's translations are faithfull to the original stories while giving a firm footing in the present. This is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in quite a while. If you think you know the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, or Ali Baba from movies then think again. These tales in their original form are timeless!
Book Description
For centuries, readers have been fascinated by the stories of the Arabian Nights. Perhaps the best-known is Sindbad the Sailor. He discovers an island paradise, but it is actually a giant whale. He sees a huge mountain. It is, in fact, the egg of the famous Roc, a bird so huge that she can carry an elephant in her talons. Sindbad manages to escape from Roc’s nest by tying his turban to the bird’s leg and is transported to the final adventure in this volume: the Valley of Diamonds. It is a story of high adventure and wit overcoming any obstacle.
Customer Reviews:
Charming Art.......2005-09-03
The art in this book is very charming, but we found the story-telling to be a bit stiff in places. Still, it's a great way to introduce younger children to Sindbad.
Average customer rating:
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El Jorobado Y Otros Cuentos De Las Mil Y Una Noches / The Hunchback and other stories from a thousand and one nights
Brian Alderson
Manufacturer: Vicens Vives
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 8431659238 |
Book Description
Building further upon the success of our editions of illustrated fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, we have now asked talented young illustrators to visually update exotic stories from 1001 Nights. The popular combination of the traditional texts with these contemporary images gives all fairy tale fans the opportunity to rediscover these narratives anew.
This book contains eight stories from 1001 Nights, including the familiar adventures of Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin and his Lamp as well as less familiar tales of the Enchanted Prince or the Three Apples. Because a different designer has illustrated each story, the book includes a delightful variety of styles. The diverse backgrounds of the contributing illustrators have resulted in a multifaceted world of imagery that draws its allure and freshness from the mixture of Eastern and Western approaches.
Like its predecessors, 1001 Nights features at least one image on each two-page spread; but unlike those in Grimm and Andersen, these rich illustrations - some of which are erotic or violent - are more suited for viewing by adults.
Customer Reviews:
Arabian classic tales imaginatively illustrated by different artists.......2005-12-03
Magical, foreign tales from the Arabian Nights inspire 16 mostly European artists to create fanciful illustrations, many evidencing influences from Persian art and manuscript illumination. The varied styles of the number of artists range from brightly-colored and cartoon-like with their rounded, cherub-like figures to dark, muted tones with clipped figures drawing one into the complexities and ambiguities of the respective tale; from brightly-colored illustrations which seem to dance on the page to ones which seem ominous signs to what lies within. Not only the artistic content makes this a small version of a coffee-table, gift book. So does the color-illustrated cover with the lettering of the title and subtitle embossed with silver. And there's the silk place marker, too.
Average customer rating:
- Magic personified in lyric story
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Arabian Nights: Four Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (Art & Design)
Manufacturer: Prestel Pub
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Binding: Hardcover
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My Life (Peter Owen Modern Classics)
ASIN: 3791308424 |
Customer Reviews:
Magic personified in lyric story.......2000-04-18
Richard Francis Burton was essentially the first to produce an unexpurgated translation of this wonderful book of tales. Though Burton's English is often excessively stilted, Jack Zipes has quite handily adapted (and condensed from the original 10 volumes) this magical grouping of stories, as told by the enchanting Scheherazade, who tells the nightly tales to save her own life. A classic and must have for anyone's library.
Book Description
Seemingly normal, I existed every day in a reality that shifted without warning to leave me in a waking dream. At 35, with a checkered past but virginity intact, I entered a traditional analytic therapy - armed with harrowing symptoms and a secret conviction that no one was smart enough to appreciate my complexity, let alone ever help. This journey through my treatment is told in journal-like style to give a uniquely close look inside a troubled mind. Ultimately, it becomes a sensual and tender "romance" between a brilliant psychiatrist and his challenging patient.
Product Description
Page created by "Russian-Books".
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The Arabian Nights (Everyman's Library)
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (Oxford Story Collections)
The Arabian Nights: A Companion
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Classics)
The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories (Everyman's Library)
