Most of us are familiar with the premise of One Thousand and One Nights (or the Arabian Nights): King Shahrayar would take a new wife each night, killing her in the morning, until the evening the vizier's daughter Shahrazad started telling him a story, leaving off just before the end so he'd spare her life for another day. Of course, the next night would bring another cliffhanger, and the cycle would repeat anew.
Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) has recast several of Shahrazad's tales in modern English, presenting them in a coherent narrative that is as spellbinding as ever. Al-Shaykh has selected 19 of the original stories, knitting them into a single extended narrative. Starting with "The Fisherman and the Jinni," she moves on to the fisherman's brother, the porter and the three ladies, a hunchback, a merchant, three dervishes, a woman and her five lovers, Sinbad the Sailor and then back to the porter and the three ladies.
The age-old conundrum regarding literature's function--is it to tickle or to teach?--is solved here, and the answer is: both. You could make the case that the clever, resourceful Shahrazad is literature's first feminist heroine, and each of her stories is filled with nuggets of simple philosophy. "I wish my story was similar to those of the two dervishes who have gone before me," says the third dervish at the onset of his tale. "But I have learned, as the days have passed, that there is nothing to be gained from regret; it changes nothing, leaves us melancholy and in pain for ever." --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.