Marvellous thieves2017
secret authors of the Arabian nights
by Paulo Lemos Horta
Although many of its stories originated centuries ago in the Middle East, the 1001 Nights is regarded as a classic of world literature by virtue of the seminal French and English translations produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Supporting the suspicion that the story collection is more Parisian than Persian, some of its most famous tales, including the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba, appear nowhere in the original sources. Yet as befits a world where magic lamps may conceal a jinni and fabulous treasures lie just beyond secret doors, the truth of the Nights is richer than standard criticism suggests. Marvellous Thieves recovers the cross-cultural encounters--the collaborations, borrowings, and acts of literary larceny--that produced the 1001 Nights in European languages....