Get Free Shipping on orders over $49
"Arabian Nights" : A Companion - Robert Irwin

"Arabian Nights"

A Companion

By: Robert Irwin

Paperback | 1 October 1995

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

The book of The Arabian Nights has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is. Far from being children's stories, The Arabian Nights contains hundreds of narratives of all kinds - fables, epics, erotica, debates, fairy tales, political allegories, mystical anecdotes and comedies. It is a labyrinth of stories and of stories within stories. The Arabian Nights: A Companion guides the reader through this labyrinth, but above all uses the stories as a key to the social history and the counter-culture of the medieval Near East and the world of the storyteller, the snake charmer, the burglar, the sorcerer, the drug-addict, the treasure hunter and the adulterer. Book jacket.
Industry Reviews
Robert Irwin's brilliant exploration of The Arabian Nights, their place in our culture and their own, elucidates a series of discoveries as various and fantastic as any made in the book itself. He explores how the stories came to be collected; the transmission from Sanskrit, Persian, Greek and Coptic sources; the style and vocabulary; the influences that the tales have had on Western art and literature; the problem of 'orientalism'; and critical attitudes to the tales through the years. There the reader finds tales within tales, rooms within rooms of magical palaces: and each area investigated opens on others, often unexpected, continually absorbing. This is not one for the nursery bookshelf. The Nights must shift place accordingly. (Kirkus UK)

More in History & Criticism of Literature

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure : Purple Smoke Distortion - Hirohiko Araki
Macbeth : No Fear Shakespeare - William Shakespeare

RRP $14.99

$11.99

20%
OFF
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Pride and Prejudice : Oxford World's Classics - Jane Austen

RRP $14.95

$11.99

20%
OFF
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane : A Novel - Lisa See

RRP $32.99

$19.99

39%
OFF
Othello : No Fear Shakespeare Series - William Shakespeare

RRP $14.99

$11.99

20%
OFF
Monsters in the Archives : My Year of Fear with Stephen King - Caroline Bicks
Auden - Peter Ackroyd

Hardcover

RRP $39.99

$33.75

16%
OFF
Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud

RRP $39.99

$26.75

33%
OFF
On the Road : Penguin Modern Classics - Jack Kerouac

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Create Dangerously : Penguin Modern - Albert Camus
Othello : Cambridge School Shakespeare - Jane Coles
Revolusi : Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World - David Van Reybrouck
Wifedom : Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life - Anna Funder

RRP $26.99

$20.75

23%
OFF
Middlemarch : Collins Classics - George Eliot

RRP $9.99

$8.75

12%
OFF
The Bookseller at the End of the World - Ruth Shaw

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
The Woman In White : Collins Classics - Wilkie Collins

RRP $9.99

$8.75

12%
OFF
The Apothecary Diaries 05 (Light Novel) : Apothecary Diaries - Natsu Hyuuga
The Iliad - Homer

Paperback

RRP $32.95

$25.99

21%
OFF
The Apothecary Diaries 07 (Light Novel) : Apothecary Diaries - Natsu Hyuuga
My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein : A Fiction - Deborah Levy

RRP $42.99

$34.99

19%
OFF
Make Believe : On Telling Stories to Children - Mac Barnett

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
The Idiot : Penguin Classics - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF