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The Book Of The Thousand Nights And A Night, Also Called The Arabian Nights, Vol. 1 - 16 (2008)

by Anonymous(Favorite Author)

4.04 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

MobileReference

review 1: Update 3: I've read 15 volumes, only 2 left. Strangely, the two most famous tales from the Nights, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, are not in Richard Burton's "official canon" but are rather in the supplemental volumes, in several versions by different translators.Update 2: I have finished the first ten volumes, the actually 1,001 Nights. It's amusing that the translator, Sir Richard Burton, waits until the TERMINAL essay to reveal the superstition that whoever reads the Arabian Nights in their entirety will die (presumably shortly thereafter) – maybe I would have skipped one if he’d said so in the beginning! In any case, I am now on the first of seven volumes of Supplemental Tales that, for whatever reason, did not become part of the canonical Thousand Nights... more and a Night.Update: just finished volume five. Only 12 to go! Great fun.Yes, this one's going to take a long time to finish! I'm actually reading a 17 volume edition and I am on volume one. Wow -- there's a reason these stories are so famous. Lots of handsome young princes and gorgeous princesses, genies, sultans, etc. and wild and intricate adventures. Burton's notes on Arabic vocabulary and customs are highly entertaining, both informative and filled with his sometimes dated, sometimes bigoted, and sometimes right-on-the-money opinions.
review 2: I'm performing in a play right now which has a decidedly Eastern feel in its premise, and the title characted is, in fact, a Jinn, so I decided to go back and reread this translation of the clasic Arabian Nights stories.I love these. They're mavelous and bawdy and terrifying and beautiful. And this translation is neither edited nor censored, so I would highly recommend it to anyone, but with a word of warning to those folks for whom Disney's Aladin is their only reference point for these tales. less

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