Annotated Arabian Nights

“[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 registers–prose, rhymed prose, poetry–and Seale captures the movement between them beautifully.”
—Yasmine Al-Sayyad, New Yorker

A magnificent and richly illustrated volume—with a groundbreaking translation framed by new commentary and hundreds of images—of 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 twenty-first century.

For centuries, readers have been haunted by the homicidal King Shahriyar, thrilled by gripping tales of Sinbad’s seafaring adventures, and held utterly, exquisitely captive by Shahrazad’s stories of passionate romances and otherworldly escapades. Yet for too long, the English-speaking world has relied on dated translations by Richard Burton, Edward Lane, and other nineteenth-century adventurers. Seale’s 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 lesser-known 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 Horta’s 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 English-language editions, The Annotated Arabian Nights expands the visual dimensions of the stories, revealing how the Nights have always been—and still are—in dialogue with fine artists. With a poignant autobiographical foreword from best-selling novelist Omar El Akkad and an illuminating afterword on the Middle Eastern roots of Hanna Diyab’s 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.

300 illustrations

Contents:

A Note on the Title

Foreword by Omar El Akkad

Introduction: Storytellers of the Arabian Nights

I. TALES FROM ARABIC

The Story of King Shahriyar and His Vizier's Daughter, Shahrazad

The Tale of the Donkey and the Ox
The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife

The Story of the Merchant and the Jinni

The Tale of the First Old Man
The Tale of the Second Old Man
The Tale of the Third Old Man

The Story of the Fisherman and the Jinni

The Tale of King Yunan and the Wise Duban
- The Tale of King Sindbad and the Falcon
- The Tale of the King's Son and the Ghoul
The Tale of the Enchanted Prince

The Story od the Porter and the Three Women of Baghdad

The Tale of the First Dervish
The Tale of the Secon Dervish
- The Envied and the Envier
The Tale of the Third Dervish
The Tale of the First Woman, the Owner
The Tale of the Second Woman, the Keeper

The Story of the Three Apples

The Story of Dahlia the Crafty

The Story of Sinbad the Sailor

The First Voyage of Sinbad
The Second Voyage of Sinbad
The Third Voyage of Sinbad
The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad
The Fifth Voyage of Sinbad
The Sixth Voyage of Sinbad
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

II. TALES FROM FRENCH

The Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Ali Khawaja, Merchant of Baghdad

The Night Adventures of Harun al-Rashid

The Tale of Baba Abdallah
The Tale of Sidi Numan
The Tale of Khawaja Hasan al-Habbal

Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Pari Banu

The Enchanted Horse

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp

The Story of the Jealous Sisters

Conclusion to The Story of King Shahriyar and His Vizier's Daughter, Shahrazad

III. HANNA DIYAB TALES

Introduction: Hanna Diyab Tales, as Transcribed by Galland in His Diary

Hanna Diyab Tales Included by Galland in the Arabian Nights

Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Pari Banu
Marjana's Perspcacity, or The Forty Robbers Extinguished through the Skillfulness of a Slave
The Enchanted Horse
The Night Adventures of Harun al-Rashid
The Story of the Jealous Sisters
Ali Khawaja, Merchant of Baghdad

Hanna Diyab Tales Not Included by Galland in the Arabian Nights