The Arabian Nights

Publisher: International Collectors Library
Binding: Oriental Tree of Life Replica Binding
Pages: 472
Translator: Sir Richard Burton
Illustrator: Steele Savage

Original Title: The Thousand Nights and a Night
Country: Middle East
Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: "The Arabian Nights -- more correctly known as The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (Kitab Alf Laylah wa Laylah) has been called the world's greatest single treasure house of fiction.
   "To open the pages of this immortal classic is to enter a world of savory delights. Ben Ray Redman has aptly described it thus: 'It is a world in which all the senses feast riotously, upon sights and sounds and perfumes; upon fruits and flowers and jewels; upon wines and stuffs and sweets; and upon yielding flesh, both male and female, whose beauty is incomparable. Romance lurks behind every shuttered window; every veiled glance begets an intrigue; and in every servant's hand nestles a scented note granting a speedy rendezvous.'
   "The apocryphal origin of these wonderful tales is known to most readers: Scheherazade, married to a king who has the unfortunate custom of ordering each of his wives killed the morning after the wedding night, saves her life by the simple strategem of telling her spouse an exciting story at night and stopping just before the denouement. By repeating the process she manages to survive a thousand and one nights -- after which the king relents and spares her life for good. And well he might, if there were more stories like these in store!
   "Actually, The Arabian Nights originated as an extensive body of folk tales -- East Indian, Persian, or possibly Arabian -- handed down for centuries by word of mouth. The tales were collected by a professional storyteller sometime between the 14th and 16th centuries and put in writing. They were first made known to Europeans through a French translation by Antoine Galland, done between 1704 and 1712.
   "An English translation was made in 1847 by Edward William Lane, an improved version in 1882-84 by John Payne. In the following year (1885) appeared the first volume of what was to become the most famous translation of all -- that of Sir Richard Burton.
   "Ben Ray Redman writes: 'Burton was temperamentally closer to the Nights themselves than any other of their western interpreters. So far as an Englishman could, he identified himself with the Moslem East and its people, lived their life, thought their thoughts, absorbed their racial past in his own alien consciousness.'
   "Burton's predecessors had discreetly edited their translations 'for the drawing-room table.' Burton's version was unexpurgated, and he himself urged his subscribers to keep it under lock and key.
   "Here, in Burton's rich style, is a carefully chosen and well-rounded collection of stories from the Nights: the fabulous tales of Aladdin and his wonder-working lamp, Ali Baba and the forty thieves, Sindbad and his fantastic voyages, the Ebony Horse... as well as many lesser known but equally enthralling tales. The drawings by Steele Savage admirably evoke the atmosphere of the mysterious East."