Arabian Literature

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Scheherazade, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Scheherazade always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.

In Volume 2 of Arabian Nights we return to Sultan Shahriyar’s palace where Scheherezade is using her spellbinding storytelling abilities to save both her and her sister’s lives. As much as the Sultan wants to kill her, each night he is drawn in by her tales and spares them. Scheherezade weaves a long, winding and exciting tale about Sinbad the Sailor, a reckless young man who has inherited his father’s wealth and spends it foolishly. His debts eventually force him to leave Baghdad and find his way alone.

Though The Arabian Nights are generally known as stories for children, they were originally tales for adults full of adventure, sexuality, violence, and the supernatural. They certainly inspired the imagination of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer, linguist, and erotologist who brought all his worldly experience and superbly expressive prose style to bear on the tales of Sindbad the Seaman and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The central core of the stories concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king has a brother who is a vizier in faraway Samarcand, and he invites him to come to the palace for a visit. Just before his departure, the vizier is shocked to discover his wife's infidelity. Enraged, he kills her. Full of pain and grief, the vizier continues on to the court of his brother, the king. But, once arrived at his brother's palace, the vizier soon discovers the king's wife is also involved in an even more flagrant infidelity.

The vengeful King Schahriar agrees to stave off the execution of Queen Scheherazade until she finishes a particularly compelling story. Her plan? Bleed one tale into another. Through fanciful histories, romances, tragedies, comedies, poems, riddles, and songs, Scheherazade prolongs her life by holding the king’s rapt attention. With origins in Persian and Eastern Indian folklore, the stories of The Arabian Nights have been reworked, reshaped, revised, collected, and supplemented throughout the centuries by various authors and scholars.

The stories in this collection can be traced back to Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age The works were collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish, and Turkish folklore and literature.

These tales are told with a rare beauty, rhyme, and rhythm. Richard Burton's translation catches the epic beauty in his unique style. It takes time to get used to Burton's prose poetry, but once you do, the reward is as deep as Shaharazad's story. As a storyteller, it was a joy to narrate these tales and bring the music of the work to life.

Like Scheherazade, Stevenson, the consummate storyteller is at the peak of his craft. Who can resist the charm of the medieval romance in "The Sire de Maletroit's Door", the strangely enigmatic rogue Villon of "A Lodging for the Night", or the sheer delight of "Providence and the Guitar"?

This delightfully narrated classic is a story within a story. In an attempt to postpone execution, the king's new bride spends one thousand and one nights enchanting him with story after story of true love, tragedy, sorcerers, and jinns.

A terrorist mastermind will start World War III...unless a US submarine crew and a crack team of Navy SEALs can stop him first.

This most celebrated collections of tales feature shape-shifting and miraculous transportation across continents, powerful jinn who rise like smoke from simple vessels, and dreams that delve into the secrets of the subconscious. This innovative book retells a selection of tales that have captured the imaginations of countless people over many centuries. Accompanying each is a contemporary short story that reframes the messages and teachings of the original, specifically written for an adult audience.

At the festival of the New Year, the King of Persia is given a horse carved from ebony. It has the power to fly riders anywhere they wish to go, and it flies the king's son all the way to Bengal. There he meets and falls in love with Princess Ameera. But to marry her, Prince Firouz will have to convince her father by defeating an army, then fool a sultan by pretending to be a doctor. Luckily anything is possible with a magic horse.

Toby Stephens takes us back to the world of cunning, adventure, mishap, and fun. Sheherezade, night after night, weaves her tales and Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and other tales come alive. The unforgettable music of Rimsky-Korsakov sets the scene perfectly. A delightful treat for young listeners.

From the enchanted depths of the sea to the jeweled halls of a Persian king, The Story of Gulnare of the Sea unfolds as a tale of beauty, mystery, and destiny. When a childless king encounters a silent, otherworldly maiden of extraordinary grace, he is captivated—yet she speaks not a single word. For a year she remains a mystery, her silence as deep as the ocean beyond his palace walls. But when she finally reveals her voice, she unveils a truth far greater than he could have imagined: she is Gulnare, a princess of the sea, bound between two worlds.

Days before starting a history-making excavation in a remote sector of the Valley of the Kings, Dr. Alexandria Randall’s father, a fellow Egyptologist, goes missing. Alex will stop at nothing to find her father—a gargantuan task in an ancient land where she doesn’t make the rules—even if she’s also a target. Alex must swallow her pride and ask for protection from an arrogant journalist named Dan. To find her father, Alex must play Dan’s wife—a ruse that both find insufferable.

Starring Brian Blessed and Rory Bremner, 1001 Arabian Nights is the first tale from The Opus Pocus: a series of symphonies transformed into funny, action-packed stories helping children to discover the magic of classical music, starting with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's dazzling composition Scheherazade. Here is the first chapter of the first story from The Opus Pocus, 1001 Arabian Nights or The Princess, the Pirate and the Baboon! It's a hairy tale of a princess, a sultan, a genie, and a shipwreck, and an unlucky pirate who keeps getting turned into a baboon!

When people need something, Inverness, New Jersey tailor Lincoln Blackthorne is the man they turn to and in turn Linc generally gets them what they want. Sometimes — like every time he turns around — there's somebody else there trying to do Blackthorne out of what he's after...usually threatening bodily harm and more often than not attempting to make good on the threat.

There was an old, poor fisherman who cast his net four times a day and only four times. One day he went to the shore and cast his net. When he tried to pull it up, he found it to be heavy. When he dove in and pulled up the net, he found a dead donkey in it. Then he cast his net again and netted a pitcher full of dirt. Then he cast his net for a third time and netted shards of pottery and glass.

Pat Walsh is a highly decorated infantry officer living life between the lines until the day he picks the wrong side in a Pentagon political battle. When an old Army buddy recruits Pat to work as an asset for the CIA, he reluctantly agrees, and his adventure begins. Caught up in the shadowy world of Middle East Arms dealing as a CIA contracted arms dealer, he stumbles upon a conspiracy that is re-shaping the region and threatens to draw the world into a global conflict. Now that he knows the secret, his life is on the line.

The teacher, Patrick Healy, traveled around the world, talked with people in different places, and collected around half a thousand myths, legends and folktales and their several alternative versions. His opinion and comments (directly or indirectly) are inevitable.

This is the first volume of his work. Patrick grouped together 33 famous Arabian children's stories and myths with his words. He retold the stories with his own opinion and approach to them. Patrick is an Australian writer who has an abiding interest in the folklore of different cultures. He has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over 25 years as a high school teacher. Patrick has traveled extensively throughout Asia and speaks both Cantonese and Mandarin fluently.