The Arabian nights : a companion
"The book of The Arabian Nights has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is. Far from being children's stories, The Arabian Nights contains hundreds of narratives of all kinds fables, epics, erotica, debates, fairy tales, political allegories, mystical anecdotes and comedies. It is a labyrinth of stories and of stories within stories. The Arabian Nights: A Companion guides the reader through this labyrinth, but above all uses the stories as a key to the social history and the counter-culture of the medieval Near East and the world of the storyteller, the snake charmer, the burglar, the sorcerer, the drug-addict, the treasure hunter and the adulterer."--Jacket
eBook, English, 2004
I.B. Tauris, London, 2004