(First, a minimal beef with this Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ entry's description of this book: it's the last of four volumes, not the fourth of 12! Also, the title on t(First, a minimal beef with this Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ entry's description of this book: it's the last of four volumes, not the fourth of 12! Also, the title on the cover reads 'The Book of The Thousand Nights...' but this entry has claimed the ISBN, so away we go...) It's only taken me about 20 years of on-and-off reading of this epic collection of classic stories, but I've finally reached that 1001st night. Unfortunately, the last leg of this journey proved the hardest. While volume 4 contained the usual assortment of fun, gory and often saucy tales associated with this collection (best known in this volume undoubtedly being 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'), the latter half got considerably drier than any other part of the series. This was, in large part, due to the interminable-feeling 50-odd pages dedicated to the 'instructional' (read 'boring as hell') series called 'Windows on the Garden of History.' Though this uses a now-familiar framework of one character telling several stories, the stories themselves are dull and poorly executed and the framing of a boorish, educated prince regaling his dinner guests in hope of enlightening them after having read a lot of books is less believable than even the most fantastical tales in the previous books. It was a little emotional reaching the climax of the ultimate framing story of Shahrazad telling all these stories in an effort to save her and her sister's lives (spoiler: it's a happy ending), but after the absolute slog that was the second half of this volume I was actually glad to be seeing the back cover. If you're a fan of truer tellings of well-known tales, I can't recommend this series enough. It is a commitment, and it is more enjoyable at some times than at others, but overall I'm glad I read the entire thing in this frank-if-stilted translation. It has opened my imagination just that bit more, and readers of fiction should always hope for at least that....more
Loading...
