The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (The Annotated Books),Used

[A]n electric new translation . . . Each page is adorned with illustrations and photographs from other translations and adaptations of the tales, as well as a wonderfully detailed cascade of notes that illuminate the stories and their settings. . . . The most striking feature of the Arabic tales is their shifting registersprose, rhymed prose, poetryand Seale captures the movement between them beautifully. Yasmine AlSayyad, New YorkerA magnificent and richly illustrated volumewith a groundbreaking translation framed by new commentary and hundreds of imagesof the most famous story collection of all time.A cornerstone of world literature and a monument to the power of storytelling, the Arabian Nights has inspired countless authors, from Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe to Naguib Mahfouz, Clarice Lispector, and Angela Carter. Now, in this lavishly designed and illustrated edition of The Annotated Arabian Nights, the acclaimed literary historian Paulo Lemos Horta and the brilliant poet and translator Yasmine Seale present a splendid new selection of tales from the Nights, featuring treasured original stories as well as later additions including Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and definitively bringing the Nights out of Victorian antiquarianism and into the twentyfirst century.For centuries, readers have been haunted by the homicidal King Shahriyar, thrilled by gripping tales of Sinbads seafaring adventures, and held utterly, exquisitely captive by Shahrazads stories of passionate romances and otherworldly escapades. Yet for too long, the Englishspeaking world has relied on dated translations by Richard Burton, Edward Lane, and other nineteenthcentury adventurers. Seales distinctly contemporary and lyrical translations break decisively with this masculine dynasty, finally stripping away the deliberate exoticism of Orientalist renderings while reclaiming the vitality and delight of the stories, as she works with equal skill in both Arabic and French.Included within are famous tales, from The Story of Sinbad the Sailor to The Story of the Fisherman and the Jinni, as well as lesserknown stories such as The Story of Dalila the Crafty, in which the cunning heroine takes readers into the everyday life of merchants and shopkeepers in a crowded metropolis, and The Story of the Merchant and the Jinni, an example of a ransom frame tale in which stories are exchanged to save a life. Grounded in the latest scholarship, The Annotated Arabian Nights also incorporates the Hanna Diyab stories, for centuries seen as French forgeries but now acknowledged, largely as a result of Hortas pathbreaking research, as being firmly rooted in the Arabic narrative tradition. Horta not only takes us into the astonishing twists and turns of the stories evolution. He also offers comprehensive notes on just about everything readers need to know to appreciate the tales in context, and guides us through the origins of ghouls, jinn, and other supernatural elements that have always drawn in and delighted readers.Beautifully illustrated throughout with art from Europe and the Arab and Persian world, the latter often ignored in Englishlanguage editions, The Annotated Arabian Nights expands the visual dimensions of the stories, revealing how the Nights have always beenand still arein dialogue with fine artists. With a poignant autobiographical foreword from bestselling novelist Omar El Akkad and an illuminating afterword on the Middle Eastern roots of Hanna Diyabs tales from noted scholar Robert Irwin, Horta and Seale have created a stunning edition of the Arabian Nights that will enchant and inform both devoted and novice readers alike. 250 illustrations