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madali
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« on: May 19, 2011, 10:56:AM » |
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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: Volume 1 (Translated: Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1885)
No one ever told me this compilation is so humongous. The translation by Richard Francis Burton is 16 volumes in total. The first book itself is relatively large and reading all 16 is too much, so I've stopped at the first volume.
The wrap around sure be familiar to most people. In short, Shahrzade marries the King, who sleeps with a wife for only a night and then executes them. To ward off her execution, she tells him stories, and usually stops halfway or starts a new one, so the King will want the hear the rest the next day. This means, in a way, this is probably the earliest form of cliffhangers. After writing this sentence, I checked the Wikipedia page on cliffhangers and it does mention this book.
The stories are various and some contain stories within stories within stories, and they are various styles and genres. They are not the kind of stories we might imagine, all genies and magics, while they do exist, most seem to be on more realistic grounds. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stories were based on truth, because sometimes the Sultans or Kings in the stories, are fascinated by the events that occur, that they ask the events to be written down.
To me, the best thing about the book, is not necessary the stories, but the world that it creates. The Islamic world sure seemed to have been more fun back then. You get a sense of the times and it is endlessly fascinating to me that the books were initially censored by the west when they were translated! That is, stories that had existed in the Islamic world for generations were considered to smutty for the west! Burton's version doesn't censor but it was privately distributed and he apologies for the smut in the introduction.
Aside from the erotica elements, there are other things that are interesting. Men weep openly and do not hide their emotions. The women seem to usually sleep around. Unibrow on both men and women is attractive. Women sleep around and like big black slave cock. Almost everyone likes drinking.
The end of the volume has lots of footnotes, which numbered to around 600 footnotes which were to me as interesting as the stories, as it provided a lot of back information.
4/5
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