Tales from 1,001 Nights

Description

An enchanting clothbound edition of the essential tales drawn from the acclaimed translation of The Arabian Nights Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality, colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights . . .

Malcolm Lyons is a Life Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. His published works include the biography Saladin, The Politics of the Holy War, The Arabian Epic and Identification and Identity in Classical Arabic Poetry. Ursula Lyons is Emeritus Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge and specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin is the author of For Lust of Knowing- The Orientalists and Their Enemies, The Middle East in the Middle Ages and The Arabian Nights- A Companion. His novels include The Limits of Vision, The Arabian Nightmare, The Mysteries of Algiers and Satan Wants Me.

A magnificent edition of the greatest collection of folk tales in the world ... an ocean of stories to be dipped into over a lifetime. And this new Penguin edition is the one to have. Settle back, pour a glass of wine and sail away with Sinbad to the Island of Serendib -- Christopher Hart * The Sunday Times *