A Thousand and One Nights

[Bekah]

At 3:26 PM -0800 2/2/05, Mark Ballinger wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 02, 2005 at 05:09:53PM -0600, monroe at mpm.edu wrote:
>>  Can anyone recommend a non-Richard Burto translation of the Arabian a.k.a. A
>>  Thousand and One Nights?   I found the Muhsin Mahdin one (Brill, 1995), as
>>  well as the 1973 Penguin ed., but ... starngely, I was not only asked this
>>  at all, but after almost having picked up Barth's Chimera and Mahfouz's
>>  Arabian Nights and Days for a friend ...
>
>This is eerie, because I was about to ask the same thing, but on a 
>different tack.  My 8 year old just read "Children of the Lamp" and 
>I was curious about this too.
>
>Can anyone recommend a not-too-difficult but worthwhile translation? 
>Not-bowdlerized, but the way, just not dense.



I would be very careful about reading some of the stories in A 
Thousand and One Nights to a child under 16.  Read them first! These 
are not the Disney versions (or even Sir Richard's).  These are alive 
and well and full of enough imaginative sex and violence to 
believably keep the king from killing off the fair maiden.

Bekah