About the book
BOOK SUMMARY
A collection of Middle Eastern folk tales framed by the story of Shahrazad, a vizier’s daughter who marries a king who executes his wives after one night.
Published 800 CE
Folk Tales
560 pages
Storytelling gets wilder and wilder
June 3, 2026
Arabian Nights has such an awesome, timeless premise. This edition, translated by Husain Haddawy, includes the prologue/set-up, eight main stories, and what feels like infinite stories within stories. Across all of them, the central theme is storytelling as a means of survival. It can be very dark but also very fun.
For me, the best one by far was “The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies.” It just keeps getting wilder and wilder. At one point, I thought I was reading the setup for a cheap porn flick. But really, all of the stories are their own particular type of crazy, and they are definitely not written for children.
The stories I most associate with The Arabian Nights — Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves — are not included in this edition. I was surprised to learn that they were not actually part of the original collection, but were added later by translators.
kelsi’s reading diary 