Arabian Nights
by Scheherazade · first published 1990
26% recommend71% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Episodic tales with nested mini-stories that are fun, wise and easy to dip into. The timeless lessons stand out, and the Haddawy translation is clear and modern.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Twenty-eight tales from The Arabian Nights translated by Husain Haddawy on the basis of the oldest existing Arabic manuscript. Few works of literature are as familiar and beloved as The Arabian Nights, yet few remain also as unknown. In English, The Arabian Nights is a literary work of relatively recent date - the first versions of the tales appeared in English barely two hundred years ago. The tales are accompanied by a preface, a note on the text, and explanatory annotations.
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…masterpiece. Easily the most influential book of my life. No affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-Eiji-Yoshikawa/dp/4770019572 Whilst on subject, I'll also recommend Husain Haddawy's translation of Arabian Nights, which is uproariously funny and also contains a lot of wisdom, and "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber, which I consider the Bible of small business. I buy a copy of E-Myth and make anyone I'm going…
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗I've been trying to get through a book a week recently, and not quite succeeding. Here's the three I'm going through right now (no affiliate links): Arabian Nights, Hussain Haddawy's translation. Hilarious and many life lessons, strongly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/Arabian-Nights-New-Deluxe/dp/039333166... Healthy at 100, John Robbins. Just started, looks…
on “What are you reading?” ↗…Times from WWI inside a BBC archives bound copy of the times from the quarter surrounding the outbreak of the war. A £5 note - one of the old white fivers the size of a dinner-napkin, inside Dulac's Arabian Nights (one of my favourite purchases - £1 from a charity shop, first edition, gorgeous book). A land deed for a farm in Wales from the 1680s, although this was in a Victorian desk-tidy, under the lining paper,…
on “A Mystery Manuscript Found in a Used Copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’” ↗I keep ~10 books at my desk. 9 of them are related to Javascript / Python / Probability etc [1]., There is one book though, that I really love to see everyday. Arabian Nights. That was the first book that was gifted to me when I was 11. I always had it with me. It reminds me of my childhood when things get too stressed and I read excerpts out of this book. [1] https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-... [2]…
on “Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?” ↗Jorge Luis Borges wrote an excellent comparison of translations of the Arabian Nights, notably those of Galland, Burton, Lane and Mardrus. His conclusion was the Lane one was most faithful to the original, despite being prudishly bowdlerized, that Mardrus emphasized the sensual aspects…
on “Arabian Nights” ↗…fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment. Plot was the coward's way out, for people who can't deal with the real world. If you're having too much fun, you're doing it wrong. I'm currently reading Arabian Nights. It's a really, really wonderful book. There's some great lessons in there and it's hilarious. When I read it in a cafe, sometimes I wind up laughing loudly out loud and people look over. But the book…
on “Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard ” ↗There are very few books that pull off these mini-stories. I found the Arabian Nights (unabridged Burton version) to pull this off with amazing elegance. The characters usually use the mini-stories for some contrived example but the stories are very short, quick and on message and together…
on “Why Finish Books?” ↗- Mort, Terry Pratchett The first Pratchett book I've read, and I can't believe I've waited so long to read his work. Humorous in a Douglas Adams sort of way. - Arabian Nights, Haddawy translation This is a great read. The translation is modern and clear, and the stories are exciting. I can understand why these stories have been around for centuries.
on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?” ↗There's a really nice modern translation of the Arabian nights by Husain Haddawy, that is worth your time. The preface to that translation goes into a lot of fun detail about the book's complex trajectory, and its unhappy translations by Burton and others. The first…
on “Arabian Nights” ↗So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. Richard Feynman It sounds like giving up on "working" can sometimes be the first step…
on “Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?” ↗The first story in Exhalation is written in the style of the Arabian Nights (Thousand and One Nights). Get the unabridged, original translation by Richard Burton - it is some of the most beautiful literature ever written - comes in 16 volumes so there will be no shortage of reading…
on “Project Starline: Feel like you're there, together” ↗…reading aloud; I think that by the time it ended (they became faster at reading to themselves than I could read aloud), I had become quite an exciting, theatrical reader. Something episodic, like The Arabian Nights, is useful: "It's bedtime. Do you want to know what happened to AliBaba next?" Books with illustrations are good, for avoiding interruptions like "Dad, what's an elephant?" But not picture-books; there…
on “Ask HN: First-time dad-to-be. What do you wish you'd known back then?” ↗I have both, The Panchatantra, and 1001 Arabian Nights. Much (or may be all) of the world's wisdom lies in there. What amazes me is how timeless these nuggets of wisdom are. Great books, both. As a child, these were simply fun, entertaining reads. Now, I…
on “The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs ” ↗…for non-mulsims entering the holy cities was death. He did the same in other dangerous places as well, taking similar risks. Burton also wrote a famous translation of the Thousand and One Nights (aka Arabian Nights)[2], translated the Kama Sutra and other works. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton [2] - Burton's is by far my favorite translation of the Thousand and One Nights. You can read…
on “Richard Hakluyt and Early English Travel” ↗…to outer space, encounters with aliens, and interplanetary warfare), but if you didn't accept that as "true science fiction" there are plenty of other candidates which predate Poe, such as parts of the Arabian Nights (well over a thousand years old by the time Poe started writing), Gulliver's Travels (1726), Voltaire's Micromegas (1752), and of course Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).
on “Is Poe the most influential American writer? A new book offers evidence” ↗