Irwin, Robert : The Arabian Nights - A Companion

Very few people, even specialists in literature, have a clear idea of when The Arabian Nights was written or what exactly it is. Widely held in contempt in the Middle East for its frivolity and occasional obscenity, the Nights has nevertheless had a major influence on European and American culture, to the extent that the story collection must be considered as a key work in Western Literature.A full understanding of the writings of Voltaire, Dickens, Melville, Proust, and Borges, or even the origins of science fiction, is impossible without some familiarity with the stories of the Nights. The Arabian Nights: A Companion guides the reader into this celebrated labyrinth of storytelling. It traces the development of the stories from prehistoric India and Pharaonic Egypt to modern times. It explores the history of the translation, and explains the ways in which its contents have been added to, plagiarized and imitated. Above all, the book uses the stories as a guide to the social history and the counterculture 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.