A cult classic that “combines the genres of travelogue, fable, dream narrative, novel and confessional into one beguiling whole” (Publishers Weekly). The hero and guiding force of this epic fantasy is an insomniac young man who, unable to sleep, guides the reader through the narrow streets of Cairo—a mysterious city full of deceit and trickery. He narrates a complex tangle of dreams and imaginings that describe an atmosphere constantly shifting between sumptuously learned experiences, erotic adventure, and dry humor. The result is a thought-provoking puzzle box of sex, philosophy, and theology, reminiscent of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco. “Deft and lovely . . . The smooth steely grip of Irwin’s story-telling genius is a joy to read.” —The Washington Post “The Arabian Nightmare is a conceit worthy of Borges.” —The New York Times “[Irwin’s] fascination for inner perception, helped along with a delight in Scheherazadian frames and exotic lore, makes for quite a rich experience: a strangely playful construct that, like an intricate Chinese box, delights with each unexpected combination and hidden drawer.” —Kirkus Reviews

Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytale, and folktale explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the profound impact of the Arabian Nights on the West, the progressive exoticization of magic, and the growing acceptance of myth and magic in contemporary experience.

Lydia Laube worked as a nurse in Saudi Arabia in a society that does not allow women to drive, vote, or speak to a man alone. Wearing head-to-toe coverings in stifling heat, and battling administrative apathy, Lydia Laube kept her sanity and got her passport back.

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

“[A]n electric new translation . . . Each page is adorned with illustrations and photographs from other translations and adaptations of the tales, as well as a wonderfully detailed cascade of notes that illuminate the stories and their settings. . . . The most striking feature of the Arabic tales is their shifting registers—prose, rhymed prose, poetry—and Seale captures the movement between them beautifully.” —Yasmine Al-Sayyad, New Yorker A magnificent and richly illustrated volume—with a groundbreaking translation framed by new commentary and hundreds of images—of the most famous story collection of all time. A cornerstone of world literature and a monument to the power of storytelling, the Arabian Nights has inspired countless authors, from Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe to Naguib Mahfouz, Clarice Lispector, and Angela Carter. Now, in this lavishly designed and illustrated edition of The Annotated Arabian Nights, the acclaimed literary historian Paulo Lemos Horta and the brilliant poet and translator Yasmine Seale present a splendid new selection of tales from the Nights, featuring treasured original stories as well as later additions including “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and definitively bringing the Nights out of Victorian antiquarianism and into the twenty-first century. For centuries, readers have been haunted by the homicidal King Shahriyar, thrilled by gripping tales of Sinbad’s seafaring adventures, and held utterly, exquisitely captive by Shahrazad’s stories of passionate romances and otherworldly escapades. Yet for too long, the English-speaking world has relied on dated translations by Richard Burton, Edward Lane, and other nineteenth-century adventurers. Seale’s distinctly contemporary and lyrical translations break decisively with this masculine dynasty, finally stripping away the deliberate exoticism of Orientalist renderings while reclaiming the vitality and delight of the stories, as she works with equal skill in both Arabic and French. Included within are famous tales, from “The Story of Sinbad the Sailor” to “The Story of the Fisherman and the Jinni,” as well as lesser-known stories such as “The Story of Dalila the Crafty,” in which the cunning heroine takes readers into the everyday life of merchants and shopkeepers in a crowded metropolis, and “The Story of the Merchant and the Jinni,” an example of a ransom frame tale in which stories are exchanged to save a life. Grounded in the latest scholarship, The Annotated Arabian Nights also incorporates the Hanna Diyab stories, for centuries seen as French forgeries but now acknowledged, largely as a result of Horta’s pathbreaking research, as being firmly rooted in the Arabic narrative tradition. Horta not only takes us into the astonishing twists and turns of the stories’ evolution. He also offers comprehensive notes on just about everything readers need to know to appreciate the tales in context, and guides us through the origins of ghouls, jinn, and other supernatural elements that have always drawn in and delighted readers. Beautifully illustrated throughout with art from Europe and the Arab and Persian world, the latter often ignored in English-language editions, The Annotated Arabian Nights expands the visual dimensions of the stories, revealing how the Nights have always been—and still are—in dialogue with fine artists. With a poignant autobiographical foreword from best-selling novelist Omar El Akkad and an illuminating afterword on the Middle Eastern roots of Hanna Diyab’s tales from noted scholar Robert Irwin, Horta and Seale have created a stunning edition of the Arabian Nights that will enchant and inform both devoted and novice readers alike.

This is my autobiography, my true story, starting out as a young educated cosmopolitan woman from Athens Greece when life was opening up before me, full of promise. With dreams of living in Paris, the City of Light that I loved so much...However, love beckoned me in the form of a charming Arab with promises of paradise and I decided to leave everything behind, including my dreams. However, my marriage to a handsome important Saudi will become my prison from which escape seems impossible...Will she make it? Will she manage to escape the nightmare and reclaim her right to life?Review"From love story to Arabian nightmare"... "Paris-educated Alexandra Symeonidou was a stewardess at Saudi Arabian Airlines when she fell in love with he pilot colleague. The years of torture she endured are now depicted in her book"... Neos Kosmos - Melbourne, Australia "It took three years to write the book, which was a best seller in Europe, because it was difficult to keep reliving the pain" - The National Herald - New York"If all this sounds like a fairy tale to you, well I can assure you, that if you were with me at this beautiful apartment in Athens, you would not think so. Nothing in this apartment resembled Saudi Arabia, and the lady in front of me was not smiling when talking about her life as presented in her autobiography..." - The Greek Reporter - Los Angeles"From a good life to a nightmarish isolation". - The Hellenic Voice - ChicagoBiographyAlexandra Simeonidou was born and grew up in Athens, Greece. As a French speaker, she studied in France (French and English Literature at the University of Aix- en-Provence and at the Institute of Political Sciences - IEP). She worked for the Greek National Tourist Board at its Paris offices in the Public Relations department. Later, she was employed by the Official Journal of the European Union, a position she left to work as an air hostess with Saudi Airlines. She lives with her son in Athens. Currently, she divides her time between writing and public affairs.

Three timely one-act plays, showing the brutal and bloody impact of the current Middle Eastern crisis on ordinary people.