Book description
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made…
Why read it?
1 author picked Arabian Nights and Days as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I enjoyed Mafouz’s marvelous retelling of the Thousand and One Nights. Although Mafouz sets the time in mediaeval era, the novel is a political fable with contemporary overtones for any authoritarian government.
Arabian Nights and Days, tells the story of the Sultan, Shahriyar, and his entourage of rotating police chiefs, spies, and informers. Many of the same characters from A Thousand and One Nights appear in his version: Sindbad the Sailor, Aladdin, Shahrazad and her sister, Dunyazad. And characters do tell stories to one another, but Shahrazad is not as prominent.
The “jinn” or evil spirits do take…From Gretchen's list on The best books influenced by Thousand and One Nights.
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