The Arabian Nights

By: Andrew Lang - translator

Narrated by: Suehyla El Attar

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Scheherazade, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Scheherazade always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.

Public Domain (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

I enjoyed the short stories. The only thing that I disliked was that the story began with the sultan killing his wives after one night due to his first wife’s betrayal. The daughter of the sultan’s head of the household wanted to stop the killings and thought she would be able to do this by telling her stories and by postponing her death by leaving the sultan on a cliffhanger. It did this one time in the Audible program, but then just continued with the stories. There was no closure as to what happened to the daughter telling her stories. It left you wondering, if you did not already know the ending of the story. The narrator did an excellent job in story telling.

Classic

Love this classic and the performers was excellent! A must read for both young and old

Good Story. Good Narration

Good story, or stories. Each new story flowed from the previous one. The narrator was fair. She often lost the flow of the narrative. It was a good listen over all.

Entertaining but Archaic!

Some entertaining tales, some mystical tales, some romantic tales and a whole lot of Islamic paternalism.

The Arabian Nights has far more stories than just the stories of Aladdin and Sinbad the sailor.

The story begins with Shahrazad who is gonna marry King Shahryar and he will kill her if she doesn't please him, so she starts telling stories to maintain his interest. The problem with this book is it never comes back to that story: the narrative delves into the stories that the woman is telling and never comes back to address the original story that led to the creation of all these other stories. I found this to be a tremendous flaw and for that reason gave a slightly less high rating. The rest of the book was well done although some of the stories were less mature than the original, so the translator took some artistic liberties. I found it interesting how the story of Aladdin was quite different than the Disney version. The narrator did a good job with the material she had to work with. Since this book left the most important part of the story out I have added it here: Shahrazad, successfully engages King Shahryar with her captivating tales over 1,001 nights, causing him to fall in love with her and ultimately spare her life, allowing them to live happily ever after. Why this ending was cut out of the book is beyond me! It was decent with some glaring flaws, perhaps there are better copies of this work out there?