Beneath the veneer of the French translator’s style, the Diyab tales remain compulsively plot-driven stories, a fitting match for the Nights tales translated from Galland’s Arabic manuscript. Indeed, they have benefited from being included in a collection that legitimizes the pleasure offered by a narrative that successfully harnesses surprise and wonder. The impact of these stories has been profound, as their plots and motifs have become part of the common repertoire of storytelling around the world. One scholar of folk stories, Ulrich Marzolph, has argued that among identifiable
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