Has anyone read Arabian Nights?

[Mwm]

To those; anyone agree with this glowing review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R15VB9FQ4ZL83W/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_btm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00390BE7Q#wasThisHelpful

As a HUGE Game Of Thrones fan, always looking for something as good, it caught my eye.

What are your thoughts about the comparisons between the abridged and unadbridged translation?

The above posted review was for the unadbridged, but I have also heard the tales drone on and on...

[A wilding]

I read most of it once, years ago, in the complete Richard Burton translation, which has copious footnotes that are ... interesting.

I thought it interesting mostly for the insight it gives into the culture it was written in, one in which, for example slavery is taken for granted and women are generally considered chattels. And there was a great deal of sex. "Greatest piece of literature ever made" sounds like hyperbole to me, though I suppose you always lose something in translation .

 

[Wilbur]

I have also read the multi-volume version of the AN that was in my grandfather's library one boring summer while recovering from a broken leg.  My own views are similar to A Wilding's thoughts.

I agree that the AN gives a lot of insight into a mature, vibrant culture that was thoroughly cosmopolitan and sophisticated while also being set inside a culture of thoroughly Islamic aspect.  Multiple, competing, yet intermingling societies are taken for granted, and trade and learning are highly valuable commodities, so in one sense it is a milieu much like our own.

On the other hand, the clear dismissal of "religious" or "mystical" Islam and the embrace of Islam as a civic religion is very different from the modern stresses within the Muslim world.  The wide acceptance of homosexuality as a normal practice among Arab men seems very progressive, but the treatment of women and view of the place of women in society is quite medieval.  The reader can easily see why the Victorians considered the work pornography, given the constant descriptions of sexual encounters, both hetero- and homosexual in nature.

Finally, the is a worldview of fatalism and determinism that pervades the work that is quite exotic or alien to a modern reader.  Popular society today embraces not just individualistic and existential viewpoints and attitudes, but actively seeks to distract people from considering their ultimate ends.  The writer of AN clearly sees everything that happens as being a part of an inexorable flow of history, and the individual's struggle against fate is portrayed as almost hubristic.  This is another area where the reader can easily picture the Victorian or Edwardian reader recoiling pretty hard from the constant shoulder-shrugging and "what will be will be" attitude of the characters in the stories.

These cultural notes aside, the political intrigue, the grim worldview, the conflicts of multiple, different political entities, the adventure, the magical and arcane items and adjuncts of desire, the hot sex between men, women, and sometimes goats in various combinations, DO echo strongly in ASOIAF.  I might recommend a version of the story translated or abridged after WWII, as the language in the version I read was pretty elevated, requiring the odd sorties into the big dictionary for my teenage self.

(Also on the shelf alongside the volumes of AN were both Haji Baba of Ispahan and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.  AN was by far the most interesting of the three in my recollections of that summer.  First, it was more exciting than the other two (Sex!  Adventure!  Magical Swords!  Cliff-hangers!  Adventurous sex using magical "swords" while hanging off a cliff!) and it had a more complex, or perhaps more intriguing, plot.)

[Mwm]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

I have also read the multi-volume version of the AN that was in my grandfather's library one boring summer while recovering from a broken leg.  My own views are similar to A Wilding's thoughts.

I agree that the AN gives a lot of insight into a mature, vibrant culture that was thoroughly cosmopolitan and sophisticated while also being set inside a culture of thoroughly Islamic aspect.  Multiple, competing, yet intermingling societies are taken for granted, and trade and learning are highly valuable commodities, so in one sense it is a milieu much like our own.

On the other hand, the clear dismissal of "religious" or "mystical" Islam and the embrace of Islam as a civic religion is very different from the modern stresses within the Muslim world.  The wide acceptance of homosexuality as a normal practice among Arab men seems very progressive, but the treatment of women and view of the place of women in society is quite medieval.  The reader can easily see why the Victorians considered the work pornography, given the constant descriptions of sexual encounters, both hetero- and homosexual in nature.

Finally, the is a worldview of fatalism and determinism that pervades the work that is quite exotic or alien to a modern reader.  Popular society today embraces not just individualistic and existential viewpoints and attitudes, but actively seeks to distract people from considering their ultimate ends.  The writer of AN clearly sees everything that happens as being a part of an inexorable flow of history, and the individual's struggle against fate is portrayed as almost hubristic.  This is another area where the reader can easily picture the Victorian or Edwardian reader recoiling pretty hard from the constant shoulder-shrugging and "what will be will be" attitude of the characters in the stories.

These cultural notes aside, the political intrigue, the grim worldview, the conflicts of multiple, different political entities, the adventure, the magical and arcane items and adjuncts of desire, the hot sex between men, women, and sometimes goats in various combinations, DO echo strongly in ASOIAF.  I might recommend a version of the story translated or abridged after WWII, as the language in the version I read was pretty elevated, requiring the odd sorties into the big dictionary for my teenage self.

(Also on the shelf alongside the volumes of AN were both Haji Baba of Ispahan and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.  AN was by far the most interesting of the three in my recollections of that summer.  First, it was more exciting than the other two (Sex!  Adventure!  Magical Swords!  Cliff-hangers!  Adventurous sex using magical "swords" while hanging off a cliff!) and it had a more complex, or perhaps more intriguing, plot.)

So the abridged version is better?

Ive also heard the book features a kaleidoscope version of events, like a story in a story in a story and so on. Is this true?

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, Mwm said:

Ive also heard the book features a kaleidoscope version of events, like a story in a story in a story and so on. Is this true?

There is one overarching story within which all of the others are told, but beyond that, it varies. Some are completely standalone while others have multiple layers of characters within the story telling further stories.

[Wilbur]

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

There is one overarching story within which all of the others are told, but beyond that, it varies. Some are completely standalone while others have multiple layers of characters within the story telling further stories.

I agree.  The princess telling the stories is the main story (Level A).

Then she tells a series of stories, traditionally one story each night (Level B).

In some of the Level B stories, the protagonists tell other characters another story (Level C).

There is at least one story (a comedy about a Jewish doctor in China trying to hide a corpse) that goes down even more levels.

[C.T. Phipps]

It's a really amazing book.

I mean, the characters are about as detailed as fairy tales....i.e. not very.

But it's very entertaining.

[The hairy bear]

I loved it, and it is truly a masterwork, but as the book progressed I found that the quality of the tales varied and some being a little repetitive. I remember skipping some of them and thinking that instead of 1001 nights it would have been better to leave it at 501.

Still an excellent read, but I guess I would try an abridged version.

[C.T. Phipps]

Mind you, I like how a lot of the stories like Aladdin are set in the Mysterious Exotic Foreign Land....of China.

Which a lot of people forget when adapting the stories.

[Gold Storm]

I liked it, the tales differ on quality. The talking donkey one being one of the worse.  Other are a lot better.  I liked reading unabridged books, I want to decide if I feel like reading that part of the book or skipping it.  

[maarsen]

I have been reading them in bits and pieces since childhood. I enjoy them all and consider them important for anyone who wants to sample  world literature. Just don't get stuck with the children's versions.