Published in Arabic in 1982, this imaginative and magical novel is a retelling of the tales of the Arabian Nights. Shaharazad, Maarouf the Cobbler, Aladdin, Sinbad, and even genies people the 17 different sections, set in an Islamic city during medieval times.
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths.