Book description
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
specialises 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.
