Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition) [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Muhsin Mahdi (Editor), Husain Haddawy (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2008

Now as sumptuously packaged as they are critically acclaimed—new deluxe trade paperback editions of the beloved stories.

Husain Haddawy’s rapturously received translation of The Arabian Nights is based on a landmark reconstruction of the earliest extant manuscript version. Readers of this classic will also want to own Sindbad, a collection of four later stories associated with the Arabian Nights tradition, including “Sindbad the Sailor” and “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Haddawy's translation is easily the clearest, most fluent and readable I have met." A.S. Byatt, The Sunday Times "The resourceful Shahrazad... has never been more entertaining than in this fresh and vigorous version of this immortal book." Doris Lessing, Favourite Books of the Year, The Independent"

About the Author

Husain Haddawy was born and grew up in Baghdad, taught English and comparative literature at various American universities, wrote art criticism, and is now living in retirement in Thailand.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; New Deluxe Edition edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393332462
• ISBN-13: 978-0393332469
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,390 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic version of the best loved stories from the Arabian Nights, February 2, 2009

By 

Scott Chamberlain "Historian and archaeologist" (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition) (Paperback)

This book is the follow-up companion to Haddawy's masterful Arabian Nights, and both volumes are indispensable to anyone who loves this famous collection of stories. As Haddawy explains, the need for this separate collection is made necessary by the Night's curious history....

When the work was first written down in the 1400s, it was given the title "The 1,001 Nights"--the length of time Shahrazad beguiled King Shahrayar with her wondrous tales. Despite this lofty title, the early manuscripts uniformly end after about 300 nights. It appears no one in the Muslim world minded this inconsistency, and the number 1,001 was taken figuratively to mean "an infinite number." When Europeans first "discovered" the work in the 1700s, however, they assumed these early manuscripts were incomplete and set out to "finish" the work by adding enough tales to reach the necessary 1,001 nights--drawn from other collections, folklore or brand-new stories written to order. Among these later additions are several stories that have, paradoxically, become some of the most famous, best-loved tales of all: Sindbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.

This leads to a difficult situation when translating the Nights. If your goal is to accurately and authentically translate the work, do you include these subsequent stories? Although they may not have been part of the original manuscript, these tales have been associated with the Nights for 300 years... should that count for anything?

When Haddawy first set out to translate the Nights, he chose not to include anything outside of the original core collection of tales. He made an excellent case for doing so--the original stories have a thematic uniformity and high literary merit, as they come from one of the greatest periods of Islamic literature. The subsequent stories, while entertaining, have a hodge-podge of ideas and themes and were quite often put together by literary hacks simply to take up space.

Still, some of those stories are too good (and too popular) to abandon altogether. That brings us to Haddawy's follow-up volume that puts forth exquisite translations of a handful of stories that, while outside the original collection, have come to define the Nights for the general public. Included are Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sindbad and the story of Qamar al-Zaman. All of the virtues of the first volume are carried over to this one--the translation could not be improved upon and the introduction is excellent. Besides being authentic, Haddawy's renditions are also vivid and immediate, without any of the purple patches found in Burton or other Victorian translations. In fact, as a credit to Haddawy's skills as a translator, you can distinguish the subtle differences in tone and style between these stories, which came from separate sources. I don't know how to describe this other than to say that there are moments in Aladdin when you can feel the influence of the roughly contemporaneous Charles Perrault (natural enough since the story was first introduced in a French version of the Nights), which is not felt in, say, Sindbad (which was drawn from an Egyptian manuscript).

This is a HUGELY enjoyable read that you will want to return to again and again.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 1,001 Nights with Shahrazad, April 12, 2011

By 

J. Lawson (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition) (Paperback)

Sindbad and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights edited from several of the oldest Arabic versions of the stories by Muhsin Mahdi and translated into English by Husain Haddawy is by far the best edition and the best translation of the familiar stories. If you were introduced to the stories as children's stories or by way of Richard Burton's purposely anachronistic English translation, you will be surprised by how fresh the stories seem when you read Mahdi's and Haddawy's excellent version. The stories are told using a tone that one can easily imagine as that used by an accomplished story-teller enchanting a crowd of listeners.

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, May 29, 2011

By 

nreviewer - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sindbad: And Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (New Deluxe Edition) (Paperback)

The product was in worse of a condition than in the photo. The cover and binding were highly worn out and pages inside were wrinkled.