12 h 29 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 29 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a story is the only thing standing between you and a cruel ruler?
Scheherazade marries a sultan whose grief has hardened into cruelty. Each night, she tells him stories, hoping to save herself and the women of his kingdom. Andrew Lang’s The Arabian Nights Entertainments gathers tales from the Middle East and beyond, with one story opening inside another. Here, a clever mind can matter more than strength, and danger can rise from a sealed bottle.
Meet the Merchant and the Genie, and the Fisherman who must outwit an angry spirit. Follow Sinbad the Sailor into monster-haunted seas, Aladdin toward a magic lamp, and Ali Baba toward a robbers’ secret cave. These adventures bring wealth, power, and peril within reach of ordinary people. Their choices invite you to wonder who sees danger clearly—and who knows how to survive it.
What you’ll discover
- A storyteller’s courage Watch Scheherazade place her hope in stories as she faces a ruler who trusts no one.
- Magic with sharp edges Discover genies and lamps that bring danger as well as the promise of power.
- The pull of adventure Sail with Sinbad through strange creatures, sudden peril, and the longing to travel again.
- Wit against strength Meet Morgiana, whose eye for small signs of danger makes her quick thinking matter.
- Stories within stories Follow tales that open into other tales, drawing you from one uncertain fate to another.
Who will love it
Readers who love fairy tales for grown-ups, voyages and monsters, clever tricks, disguised rulers, magic lamps and talking birds, and stories that open into other stories like boxes inside boxes.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A clever girl buys her life with stories
- One story can bargain for another man's life
- Strange fish lead a sultan to a ruined kingdom
- A lovely house has one rule about questions
- Three one-eyed princes tell their strange adventures
- Sindbad shows that riches are paid for in danger
- A dead jester passes from house to house
- Love and magic carry heroes across the world
- Greed, envy and wit decide every fate
Who’s who
- ScheherazadeThe vizier's clever daughter who marries the Sultan on purpose and uses unfinished stories to stop his killing.
- Sultan SchahriarA king betrayed by his first wife who has each new bride killed at dawn until he wants to hear the end of a tale.
- DinarzadeScheherazade's younger sister, who wakes her before sunrise to ask for a story.
- Haroun-al-RaschidThe Caliph of Bagdad, who roams his city in disguise with his vizier Giafar and judges what he finds.
- Sindbad the SailorA merchant of Bagdad who makes seven voyages and survives monsters, shipwrecks and burial alive.
- AladdinA poor tailor's idle son who wins a princess and a palace through a lamp and its genie.
- CamaralzamanA prince who refuses marriage until he sees a sleeping princess of China and falls in love.
- Princess ParizadeA sister who braves a mountain of insulting voices to win a Talking Bird, a Singing Tree and Golden Water.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 29 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 8 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Las mil y una noches in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Las mil y una noches
by Andrew Lang
Each night a doomed bride tells a half-finished tale to a sultan, and each dawn she lives to finish it.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Would you keep telling stories if each dawn might be your last? Scheherazade does exactly that.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A clever girl buys her life with stories
The whole collection rests on one frame. Sultan Schahriar, shamed by his first wife, decides that no woman can be trusted. Every evening he marries a new bride and has her strangled in the morning, and the city fills with weeping and curses.
Scheherazade, the grand vizier's daughter, is learned, brave and beautiful. She begs her father to give her to the Sultan, and though he pleads with her to refuse, she holds firm. She also makes a plan with her sister Dinarzade, who will wake her an hour before dawn and ask for one of her charming stories.
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What is The Arabian Nights about?
It is a collection of tales told by Scheherazade to a sultan who kills each new bride at dawn. She ends every night with a story half told, so he lets her live to finish it.
Who is Scheherazade?
She is the grand vizier's learned and courageous daughter. She volunteers to marry the Sultan to save the other girls of the city, and she uses her gift for storytelling to delay her fate, night after night.
Which famous stories are in this book?
It includes the Merchant and the Genie, the Fisherman, the Three Calenders, the seven voyages of Sindbad, the Little Hunchback, Prince Camaralzaman, Noureddin, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, the Enchanted Horse, and the tale of the Talking Bird.
The author
Andrew Lang
1844–1912 · Scottish poet and folklorist
Andrew Lang was a Scottish writer born in Selkirk in 1844. He lived in London and died in Banchory in 1912. He wrote poetry, novels, literary criticism, and works on folklore. He edited The Blue Fairy Book, published in 1889, and other fairy-book collections, including The Violet Fairy Book in 1901.
More by Andrew Lang
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