Marina Warner's lastest tome involves re-telling several key stories from the famous "Arabian Nights" and then discussing the influences that led to them being written and how they've influenced fiction (and fashions) both Eastern & Western ever since. She also digresses into several other areas including movies and (of all things) Freud's couch.
The stories themselves are a joy to read and tempt me to buy the recent Penguin 3 volume set of the Arabian Nights. The analysis and discussion of them however does tend to range from fascinating to boring as hell - it often descends to academic paper level..maybe I'm just too uneducated to take it all in!
Not as well illustrated as some of Warner's previous works but still interesting enough to keep me reading for a couple of months on and off.
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