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Dec 26, 2011

For those 2 people who don't know, The Arabian Nights is sort of a collection of short stories told in Arabia (which seems to include India and parts of China) waaaaaay back in the day. The framework of the story is about a sultan who caught his wife cheating on him. After he has her killed, he decides to take out his revenge on the entire sex, so he marries a different wife every day and has her killed the next morning. Scheherazade is the Grand Vizier's beautiful, intelligent daughter. She More...

1 comment like (16 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2011

Erik rated it:

I really need a 2.5 stars option, though I would end up using it on three-fourths of everything. As a generic, I can neither recommend nor disavow this book.

Okay so the beloved Arabian Nights, tales from a thousand and one nights. I should start with what this is NOT. This is not a linear story about a princess telling stories to a king. This is not a childrens' read involving genies, magic, and cyclopi (I refuse to spell this any other way, no matter the red line beneath it). T More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 30, 2011

Shovelmonkey1 rated it:

Having just re-read this book i'm reminded how the flowery wording and a hint of "eastern promise" manages to white wash over the actual issues of the story. Sheharezade is actually technically being kept hostage with a death penalty hanging over her head, forced to spin yarns to save not only her skin but that of all the other virgins in the vicinty. Her tales touch on marital rape, mass murder, theft, deception, fratricide, regicide, racism and necromancy. And you all thought America More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Aaron rated it:

The more I read user reviews of The Arabian Nights, the more convinced I am that people are just posting negative things to be contrary. How can you not love this collection of stories?

Common complaints:

1)It's racist -- Yes, the work itself, by today's standards, could probably be considered racist. This work was originally written many thousands of years ago. Keep that in mind and get off your high horse.

2) It's misogynistic-- I disagree. That which would b More...

0 comments like (16 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Destiny rated it:

This edition is a translation of the first 271 nights from the "1001 Nights" cycle.

One of my favorite aspects of this work is the role of Shahrazad. While many people discuss that she is telling the stories to save her own life, what people fail to recognize many times is that, really, she volunteers to be placed in the position in order to save her kingdom. She's a great literary heroine--saving the world through storytelling.

It also provides a great lens int More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2011

K.D. rated it:

Oh, the wonders of literature! While reading this book I could not help but sing the songs or hum the tunes associated with the tales:

♪♫♪ A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming ♪♫♪

I grew up with mostly Filipino komiks around me. Only my father loved reading books and we had very few (compared to what I have now) classics and contemporary books at home. My parents did not read to me when I was young. Th More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Book Elf rated it:

When I read the book "Children of the Lamp, The Curse of Akhenaten", I was curious with the story of Arabian Nights as it was mentioned in the book and encouraged to read. I now understood why. Part of the story of the Children of the Lamp was taken from the Arabian Nights tale. I soon immersed myself in the curious magical world of Arabian Nights and indeed, it was cleverly done. I liked the premise these stories were weaved as a collection of short tales. And I wonder why it got a po More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Shannon rated it:

Shahrazad is not the heroine I expected. Yes, she stays alive and saves the female population through storytelling. I get it! She's intelligent and she replaces sex with story (all that staving off the climax of the tale for another night - the delight/delay pairing - is metaphorically clever, but not heroic and eventually rather annoying). I see that her ability as a raconteur is seemingly supposed to bolster her beyond the limitations of her gender -I should view her as one who asserts her ow More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" rated it:

Great book. Not one that can be read in one sitting, though. I really like the form of narrative, with a story leading into or encompassing another story. Most of this book is like onion layers. You really do want to have a bookmark handy if you put this one down. This was Scheherazade's tactic to keep King Shahryar's attention so that he couldn't have her executed the next morning. He was a very insane man who hated women to the degree that he would marry a virgin and have her killed the nex More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Terry rated it:

“Shahrazad turned to King Shahrayar and said, ‘May I have your permission to tell a story?’ He replied, ‘Yes,’ and Shahrazad was very happy and said, “Listen”:

Of all of the world’s story collections, surely The Arabian Nights has the best framing device—the best fictional pretext by which to justify the telling of the other stories. I mean the story of Shahrazad (as this text transliterates her name), the daughter of the vizier to King Shahrayar. Bitter over his first wife’s betrayal More...

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Nov 17, 2010

Farhad rated it:

از نظر زيبايي شناختي هزار و يك شب را مي توان پايه گذار اساطيري همه داستان ها ناميد.چه هر چيزي كه به عنوان جذابيت در داستان نيازمند ان هستيم همگي در اين جا نهفته است.
جذابيت داستاني
تكنيك داستان نا تمام و ايجاد حسي از كشش و خيال پردازي در خواننده
جذابيت جنسي

نه اينكه تن فروشي شهرزاد از او استعاره اي چون دنيا مي سازد؟شايد عجوزه ي هزار داماد حافظ همين شهرزادي است كه داستان هاي روزگار را ورق مي زند و ما به تماشاي آن نشسته ايم ولي در لحظه اي كه عطش درك ما را ديوانه نمو More...

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Nov 17, 2010

Chris rated it:

Anyone who has looked into reading the Arabian nights realizes quickly that over the centuries these tales have been added to, bowdlerized, imitated, rewritten, and re-edited by so many different people in so many different place at so many different times it is nigh impossible to determine the most authentic version that is closest to the original. Not that I am a scholar in Middle Eastern literature, but this edition packs a punch.

This edition, the edition that I read, is a new tra More...

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Nov 17, 2010

HM marked it as to-read

صد و شصت سال پس از ترجمه فارسی هزار ویک شب، یک ناشر و مترجم در ایران متن کامل و جامعی از این کتاب معروف را به زبان فارسی برگردانده اند. این ترجمه بر اساس متون معتبر عربی و با بهره گیری از ترجمه های معتبر انگلیسی و فرانسوی انجام شده است
نشر مرکز که از جمله ناشران با سابقه ایران است، از سال ۱۳۷۶ به ابراهیم اقلیدی، که در ادبیات عرب و جهانی دستی دارد، پیشنهاد داد برگردان فارسی کاملی از این کتاب را به دست بگیرد

اقلیدی نیز علاوه بر فراهم کردن منابع تحقیق و نسخه های معتبر این کتاب، تح More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

Craig rated it:

Very entertaining and clever in the set up and framing of the stories. Some very funny and others devilishly wry, with only a one that just did not pull me in. I noticed two main themes among many others: 1. Men are constructed as the focus for most of the stories (yes, I know that Shahrazad is bold and takes a huge risk and a few female witches rear their crafty heads). Their pride and arrogance in their positions of power pretty much are the set up for the stories; and 2. The value of t More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 17, 2010

پیچک سر به هوا added it

مدتی بود هر شب چند صفحه ای از این کتاب رو مطالعه می کردم...

تجربه ی جالبی بود. توصیه می کنم اگه قصد دارین قصه گوهای خوبی باشین برای کودکان تون و قصد دارین تو این زمینه روی خودتون کار کنین،از حال و هوای هزار و یک شب به ساده گی نگذرید. گرچه الان ترجمه های و چاپ های متفاوتی از این مجموعه تو بازار هست که من مقایسه نکردم شون More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 18, 2011

Heatherwilliamson rated it:

This is not a complete compilation of the classic 'Arabian Nights' tales, but rather several select tales, and has been heavily abridged for children readers. Much of the sexual and bawdy content has been taken out (although there's still a pretty hefty dead body count), largely by heavily editing chunks of the story out of existence. This can be rather baffling, as some of the stories haven't been "edited" so much as left with huge gaps. As such, when I read these stories as I child, More...

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Aug 02, 2011

Scot added it

The timing of this book coming into my life could not have been better. I picked it up on a whim at a used bookstore while on vacation and shortly after I returned home, the US started its war with Iraq. People of the Muslim faith were greatly misunderstood and images coming back from Baghdad and Mosul and Fallujah were of a bombed out seemingly third world country. Arabian Nights portrayed a much different civilization, one of culture, class, great faith, and a very advanced society. Ever e More...

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Nov 28, 2011

Kay rated it:

This Edition gets extra points for being Absolutely Beautiful. While I'm not completely in love with the illustration style, the cover, the pages, the individual story title pages are fantastic.

The Arabian Nights is a series of long short stories. Scheherazad is clever in the sequence of stories she tells the King...starting out with heroes just like him and gradually moving on to character who aren't like him, so he can learn empathy with others. The stories themselves are often ra More...

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Sep 01, 2011

Ian rated it:

Sir Richard Francis Burton is an odd duck. He is often accused of inserting his "modern" Western prejudices into his work, and he does, but nowhere near the extent to which he is accused. FACT: Islamic cultures, like most cultures in the world, are openly and unabashedly racist, sexist and xenophobic. As a result, like much of our own, much of their great literature contains these elements in spades (Shylocke or Othello, anyone?). What is more, many of these stories did not originate w More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 24, 2011

1brodiee added it

I thouroughly enjoyed the collection of stories. The stories inside the story, which as it does sound confusing , such as the story that Disney based their movie on "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", or my two favorites "Ali Baba and the Fourty Theives" and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor". The frame, earlier described as the story filled with stories, consists of Queen Scheherazade and her husband King Shahryar. King Shahryar was famous, or rather infamous, for ki More...

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Dec 25, 2010

Mommalibrarian rated it:

I have not read the Brother's Grimm so perhaps I should not be so hard on older ideas and levels of violence. This book is definitely not politically correct. Women are property; bought and sold; beheaded; forced to marry; admired for their beauty and nothing else. Most of the stories are larded with 'poems' and 'songs' which seemed irrelevant to me and were deleted by some earlier translators. Although there is reference to the faith, Islam, there is much drinking and coarseness.

More...

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Aug 26, 2009

Madeline rated it:

I am planning to read through this whole book someday, I swear. But it's going to be a slow process. Here, in list form, are the reasons I may or may not finish The Arabian Nights.

Reasons I May Finish This Ridiculously Long Book:
-Scheherazade (or whichever of the twenty ways to spell her name you prefer) is kind of a badass genius. Since her father is the king's vizier, she gets exempted from said batshit crazy king's plan to marry and then kill every single available virgin in More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 21, 2011

Alex rated it:

As sun comes down in the valley, bound by the Tigris and Eufrat
Submerges into dark the capital of Muslim Khalifat
The night descends on tired from the heat old city of Baghdad
Where spears of high-rising minarets reflect moon's cold yet tender light
The freshness of the breeze brings comfort and the leisure of delight
Unfolding fairy tale, being told to Shahryar by princess Scheherazade
Inspired by the need of her life saving plight
Comes up the fantasy, entailed in More...

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Dec 01, 2010

Ahmad rated it:

در این مدت شهرزاد از ملک سه پسر داشت. چون این حکایات به پایان رسانید، زمین ببوسید گفت: ای ملک جهان اکنون هزارویک شب است که حکایات و مواعظ متقدمین از بهر تو حدیث میکنم. اگر اجازت دهی تمنائی دارم، ملک گفت: هرچه خواهی تمنا کن، شهرزاد بانگ به دایگان زد فرزندان او را حاضر آوردند، یکی راه رفتن توانستی و دیگری نشستن و سیمین شیرخوار بود. شهرزاد زمین ببوسید و گفت: ای ملک جهان، اینان فرزندان تو اند، تمنا دارم که مرا به این کودکان ببخشائی و از کشتنم آزاد کنی. ملک کودکان را به سینه گرفت و گفت: به خدا سوگن More...

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Dec 01, 2010

Ahmad rated it:

چون شب دویستونودوهشتم برآمد: از جملهء حکایتها این است که خلیفه هارونالرشید، چون جعفر وزیر برمکی را بکشت، فرمود که: «هرکس از برای جعفر گریه کند و یا مرثیه گوید او را نیز بکشند.» پس مردمان خود را از این کار باز داشتند. اتفاقا عربی بادیهنشین را عادت این بود، که در هر سال قصیدهای در مدح جعفر گفته به زیارت او میآمد، و هزاردینار از جعفر گرفته باز میگشت، و تا آخر سال آن هزار دینار صرف کرده، با قصیدهء دیگر میآمد. در آن سال نیز به عادت معهود با قصیدهای بیامد. چون به بغداد برسید، جعفر را کشته یاف More...

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Dec 01, 2010

Ahmad rated it:

996. The Thousand And One Nights, Anonymous

در بارهء اصل «هزار و یک شب» که از شناختهترین کتابهای جهان است و تقریبا به همهء زبانهای زندهء دنیا ترجمه شده، سخن بسیار گفتهاند و از معتبرترین نوشتهها در این باب یکی مطلبی است که مسعودی (متوفی بهسال 346 هجری قمری) در مروجالذهب آورده، و دیگر قول ابنندیم (متوفی بهسال 385 هجری قمری) در الفهرست، از سخنان این دو چنین برمیآید، که کتاب ایرانی «هزار افسانه» بیتردید اصل «الف لیلة ولیله» بوده است. اما ممکن است، و احتمال زیاد هم دارد، که خ More...

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Feb 05, 2011

Jeff rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Nov 15, 2008

Ron rated it:

Frankly, I didn't finish it. Starting one story--or three--then intermixing them with one--or three--more, then branching into as many more may have kept Scheherazade's king/husband enthralled, but I would have cut her head off after the third or fourth night.

About a quarter of the way in, I didn't care any more. So I cut her off (and closed the book). This will probably be the only book I review without having read the whole thing, but be warned.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2011

Nan rated it:

All the classic tales of The 1001 Arabian Nights. Some a bit different from the forms I met them in as a child. Fairy tales, low jokes and some moral tales. Worth reading, although to the modern sensibilities so many repetitions of the action that it's rather in a soap opera form - but that was rather the point of stretching out the tales. The lady Scheherazade was talking for her very life and managed to entertain the king for all that time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More...

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Apr 26, 2011

Mieneke rated it:

When I got the pick of my mother's books when she needed to get rid of them as she was emigrating, the reason I picked Tales from the Thousand and One Nights was twofold. First of all I was of the opinion that I ought to have read at least part of one of the great, classical literary influences, both on the literature I studied at university and on my beloved speculative genre. Second of all, I had bought Anthony O'Neill's Scheherazade, a retelling of the story of Scheherazade, a few months earl More...

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