Tales From 1001 Nights

The author of this collection of erotic and enduring fables is unknown and the stories go back to predate the 19^th century. For this fact alone, The Thousand and One Nights earns its place in The Book right at the very beginning of the list, as the stories that make up the collection have such a strong power to endure and captivate readers of all ages and generations. 

King Shahriyar is a man in the habit of deflowering and killing virgins on a nightly basis. When his vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, is taken as his next victim, she postpones her death by telling the king stories and entertaining him with her powers of storytelling over the span of one thousand and one nights. The tales that she regales the king with are filled with eroticism, death, magic, religion, and adventure, and they also contain poignant messages about the rewards that follow good deeds and the punishments that follow the bad; and through these tales, she hopes to postpone her death indefinitely. 

The prose of this book may be dated, but the tales that make up The Thousand and One Nights are timeless. I was especially excited to read the original tales of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad, and Aladdin; especially Aladdin as the only version I know is the Disney version, which is so different and Disney-fied. 

The initial appeal about the construction of this book is the story-within-a-story scenario; the story of Shahrazad is the outer ring of the ripples in the pond, which is then followed parallel by the stories that she tells the king. Then, chasing after that ring in the pond, are the smaller stories within the stories within the story: tales that the characters of Shahrazad’s stories are telling to other characters. It’s this structure that brings the hook to the book and causes the reader to power through it, as they are just as eager as King Shahriyar to find out what happens next. It’s a sort of never-ending story scenario as Shahrazad’s tales don’t actually reach a climax, but just continue to go on and on, with the king and the readers eagerly waiting to see how the ending will turn out. 

My personal opinion of the book was that it was long and sometimes hard. I admired the stories-within-stories structure, but (and I haven’t had all that much time to read recently) I found it slightly cumbersome and, because it’s a collection of fables, there are bound to be some that just don’t hold the reader’s attention. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but it’s not a read to be taken on lightly. The great thing about it is that it does pose a challenge. 

Filled with eroticism, treasure, magic, evil, religion, violence, royalty, murder, castration, horror, adventure, and romance, The Thousand and One Nights is a classic collection of timeless fables that has survived this long and will continue to endure. It’s not a book for the lighter readers out there, but one that needs to be persevered through, but if you’ve got that strength and patience, then you’re in for a treat.