One Thousand and One Nights

Starred review from June 10, 2013
For this retelling of the classic Arabic tales, Beirut-born al-Shaykh translated 19 of the originals and, beginning with its traditional frame story, embeds narrative within narrative to create a striking new version. To counter "the cunning and deceit of women," King Shahrayar beds a new wife each night only to have her killed in the morning. But his vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, vows to save the kingdom's girls by marrying the king and then telling him stories that so enthrall him that he can't kill her. From that opening, the stories build and fold in on themselves until we find ourselves back at the beginning. These stories pulse with sex, magic, and moral ambiguities; while terrible violence underscores moments of pure beauty. Guests are invited into a home only to encounter terrible cruelty; a woman becomes king so she can be a beacon for her lost love; a man plucks his eye for the pain he caused his family. Why retread such well-worn territory? In her foreword al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) speaks of rediscovering her own Arab roots while recognizing the power these ancient women held. Suprising and delightful, al-Shaykh's masterful work has restored the tale to contemporary relevance.

June 15, 2013
Elegant, pointed retelling of the classic of medieval Arabian literature by Lebanese novelist and journalist al-Shaykh (The Locust and the Bird, 2009, etc.). As Sir Richard Burton well knew, the tales that Scheherazade spun in order to keep from having her sultan husband chop off her head were full of erotic moments, explicit and implicit alike. Denatured into fables for children, the tales of Ali Baba, magical caves, flying carpets and Sindbad the sailor lost any such erotic possibilities, which al-Shaykh very gamely restores with the unmistakable conjuring of "[t]he stick, the thing, the pigeon, the panther, the shish kebab, the cock" and dizzying tales of noblewomen ravished by African slaves--in short, the sort of things that ought to find these once-tame stories a whole new audience. It's not just the sex, but also the sexual violence and mistrust that run like a swift current below the stories. Says one sorrowful shah to his brother early on, "I caught my wife in the arms of one of the kitchen boys in her quarters before I set out to come to you. My anger took control and I avenged myself by slaying both of them and hurling their bodies in a trench, like two dead cockroaches." It would take an accomplished psychotherapist and dream interpreter to plumb the depths of what al-Shaykh reveals of the relations, as fraught as any in Faulkner, of cloistered women and fearful men and those ever-watchful black slaves. Yet some of what the Arabian storytellers unleashed on their audiences, if we are to trust these versions, is utterly unveiled, as when a young woman tells her sisters, "I have learned a lesson: there is little that is good in marriage." Readers of a nostalgic bent will be pleased to discover Sindbad in these pages, though a different one from the Sindbad of their youth. As a storyteller reporting Sindbad's very own account of his adventures relates, "at times I was so terrified that I nearly shat myself." A lovely book, and a wonderful revisiting of tales that, told once again, are meant to inspire--well, if not piety, at least more humane behavior toward our fellow adventurers.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2013
Telling tales is old as humanity, with as many motivationsto amuse or distract, instruct or mislead, edify or abaseas tellers. Vizier's daughter Shahrazad spun tales to save the young women threatened, as she was, by a cuckolded king's brutality. Lebanese journalist, novelist, and playwright al-Shaykh retells them to celebrate her rediscovery of the Arab classic's stylistic artistry, the complex society it portrays, and its stunning female characters, far from passive and fearful, quite aware of their social limits, yet full of will and intelligence and wit. For al-Shaykh, as for Shahrazad, stories are matryoshka dolls, nesting within one another and casting ghosts and shadows in all directions. Here, Shahrazad first tells the traditional tale of the fisherman and the jinni, and then brings together at the impressive home shared by three beautiful sisters, a porter, three dervishes, and three merchants. Over many hours, each character tells multiple stories for different goals in a context of ever-shifting personal and power relationships. Hilarious, horrifying, touching, enlightening, or revelatory, al-Shaykh's versions of these ancient tales remind us how story-cycles overwhelm limits of space or time or culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013

A crucial if controversial figure in Middle Eastern literature, Lebanese author al-Shaykh here translates 19 of the stories told by young queen Shahrazad.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 15, 2013

Lebanese novelist al-Shaykh (Women of Sand and Myrrh) takes the hundreds of stories that make up the traditional One Thousand and One Nights and with concision pares them down to 19. Focusing on tales that expose misogyny--of men who kill their wives and lovers, who injure them, or who leave them for dead--al-Shaykh is interested in how women grapple with a society that is stacked against them. Gone are Aladdin, Ali Baba, and even much of Sinbad, but what remains is a haunting collection of stories about women who, if not always heroic, are resilient, funny, sexual, and, above all, smart. Anchored by two central framing narratives, the tales lead into one another like a set of matryoshka dolls. The beautiful language is deceptively simple: readers are in danger of being lulled into marathon reading sessions. VERDICT It's no wonder al-Shaykh identifies with Shahrazad; they are very much the same. This retelling will find an eager audience in readers who love folktales, especially those with a feminist slant. Not for the faint but for lovers of true heart, these stories are gory, lusty, and very, very good. [See Author Q&A, LJ Reviews, ow.ly/kzWHL].--Molly McArdle, Library Journal

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.