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In medieval Baghdad lives a poor shopkeeper named Abu al-Banat, who has seven daughters but no sons. Diametrically opposite, in both wealth and nature and offspring, is his older brother, a merchant who is very wealthy, pompous, and far too proud of his seven sons. He spares no opportunity to taunt Abu al-Banat about his daughters: what use are seven daughters? And who will marry girls who bring no dowry? When Abu al-Banat, remembering the childhood closeness between his beloved fourth daughter Buran and her eldest cousin Hassan, suggests a match between the two, he (and Buran) are ridiculed and insulted by both Hassan and his father.

And this prompts Buran to ask her parents� permission to put into action a daring, seemingly impossible, plan she’s concocted. Namely that she—highly intelligent, well-tutored by her doting father, and enterprising—should, disguised as a man, leave Baghdad and set up trade in a faraway city. After all, that’s what her uncle is doing with the help of his seven sons: one is in Cyprus, one in Damascus, and so on, each handling the family business in a different city.

Good, solid adventure, a great romance. Deception. Revenge (here, as in the best of stories, a dish served up cold). A very feisty female protagonist, who really is the central character of the book, even though one large section of the book is narrated not by Buran herself but by Mahmud, son of the Wali of Tyre. Some humour, a healthy dose of a great relationship between a father and the daughter he’s so proud of.

A tale straight out of The Arabian Nights, and thoroughly enjoyable. I wasn’t surprised to discover—from the note at the end of the book—that Seven Daughters and Seven Sons is based on a folk tale from Iraq.

My only grouse is about a minor detail regarding a man’s assumption that if he is hopelessly in love with another person, the object of his affections must be a woman. was much more acceptable in the medieval Islamic world than in the West, so it’s highly likely that the average nobleman wouldn’t think twice about falling in love with a beautiful youth.