Words cannot describe the fantastic quality of this collection of Arabic literature. But don't get the book just to read the tale of Ala al-Din (Aladdin) and his Wonderful Lamp, because the other tales included surpass this merely moderate one by far - although it's interesting to find out that a black midget is Aladdin's primary nemesis (upon who Disney's Jafar is based, apparently).

The stories touch on such a wide variety of unusual topics: a man's visit to the kingdom of mermaids, a dead beggar getting tripped over again and again, a guy claiming to have several volcanoes in a portable bag, a Sultan's escape from a buffalo-faced woman in the presence of a group of pink ladies, and the marriage of a prince to a turtle. Insane stuff.

My favorite story is The Everlasting Shoes by far. It's quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever read. It's about an old miser who's so cheap he never buys new shoes. He just patches up the pair he has whenever they get holes. The addition of so many patches naturally make his shoes bigger and bigger. Eventually the shoes become ridiculously huge and heavy and smelly, and they make a lot of noise as the miser walks. The scene of the shoes being thrown into the river and getting caught in the millwork is well worth the price of the entire book.

There's a story in here that looks VERY much like a mid-east version of Cinderella. Quite interesting.

I am unable to tell how many liberties the author has taken in translating the tales, but they're definitely fun to read. There are tons of ancient day metaphors and funny insults like, "You flea on a cockroach's kneecap!" and "Son of a plank! Did you steal your brains from a table?" I really liked reading the misfortunes of the protagonist in the Keys of Destiny stories, and the nagging wives that appear sporadically are pretty darn funny.

The things I didn't like about this book were very few. Only its frequent mentioning of Allah and the puzzling weakness of its 998th and 999th stories about a flying toy horse.

I would recommend the Arabian Knights to anybody over the age of fifteen; probably because I was so surprised at the large amount of enjoyable humor.

Absolutely the best work of fiction EVER. Indeed, I too wish, that there were 1001 stories or even 1.000.001 ones inside this lovely book but all good things must come to an end.
Anyways, if you wander, why 1001 nights? - here's the answer.

Two brothers, both Kings, have both been victims of cheating wives. They both kill them and their lovers but later on, one of the brothers, King Shahryar can't stand the loneliness in the dark so he comes to a decision to marry a new wife fetched by his Counsellor, every night then kill her next day after because he believes that "All women are fickles" and that "None of them love their husbands for more then one day"...so he marries a new wife each night until the streets began to get emptied. Then, when 'no other girl' is left, Shahrazad, the eldest girl of the King's Counsellor, becomes his 1001-st wife. Unlike other wives, Shahrzad survives because...

Do not say you read books if you didn't read this one!

Highly recommended

Oxford University Press, 1993. Stories (meant for children) include fables, romances, narrative jokes,and fairy tales, linked to one another by the King and Queen's own love story. Shahrazad's attempts to stave off execution by telling just one more story have been expanded to fuller effect than in many versions. The book is written in a style that is clear, gripping, and poetic, conveying the flavor of the original and preserving the context of a magic, jinni-ridden desert world. 12 color plates and many b/w illustrations.