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"What
is this compared with what I shall tell you
tomorrow
night if the king spares me and lets me live?"
The following books will introduce you to Scheherazade, who
said these words in The Arabian Nights (Haddawy trans.).
To order a book, or for more information, follow the book
title links to Amazon.com,
then return home to browse other
characters.
- The
Arabian Nights (Husain Haddawy, Trans.; Everyman's
Library). New York: Knopf, 1990.
- The best available translation, in modern English
but still preserving an exotic mood, this book
includes the frame story in which Scheherazade
begins telling tales to prolong her life, along
with the core stories of the original collection.
Haddawy's historical introduction is invaluable.
- The
Arabian Nights Entertainments of The Book of a Thousand
Nights and a Night (Sir Richard Francis Burton,
Trans.). Modern Library, 1997.
- Burton's translation made the Nights
famous in the West and Burton himself notorious
for his prurient rendering of sexual episodes in
the stories.
- Farwell, Byron. Burton:
A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton. Penguin,
1990.
- Burton's own adventurous life could be strung out
into many nights of ribald storytelling.
- Rice, Edward. Captain
Sir Richard Francis Burton. New York: Scribner's,
1990.
- Another fine biography of this Victorian rebel,
including his translation of the Arabian
Nights.
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