Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange: A Medieval Arab Fantasy Collection

Excellent product the book was in excellent condition

A good overview of some rare texts that aids the storyteller to look at the construction of medieval Islamic stories. Essential reading for any storyteller.

This is a collection of exotic eastern fairy tales told in such a gripping manner as to make them believable. Try "The Story of the Forty Girls and what happened to them with the Prince". Marvellous imagination. Somebody should get this illustrated in the art nouveau style in the manner of such artists such as Edmund Dulac, assuming that such an artist can be found.

This manuscript ended up in Istanbul, and it somehow avoided being translated until now. It is a first draft of several stories: some of these are now in '1001 Nights', and some aren't.(I bought it on Amazon in February when it was announced, but Amazon didn't deliver it until March... so, *that* was annoying. I have waited 'til June to post this review. Also the capsule here is giving top billing to the cover graphic-designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. Her artwork is indeed good - as you can see - but the work of translation was Malcolm Lyons. Lyons deserves credit as primary author, with CBS and Robert Irwin in second place. My bad experience with Amazon itself will, in sha llah, not impinge upon this review of the text.)The prose is breathless ("this happened and they saw that and then that happened and ..."); somewhat like that Gospel kata Markon. There is little character-development, and plots are almost always resolved by dei ex machina. The story of "Julnar of the Sea" has the problem that the narrative goes through several main characters - so I start thinking that I'm going to read about Shahriyar and Julnar, and next I'm reading about their son Badr. Have y'all read Aristotle's "Poetics"? Well... few of the authors *here* have read it. So I suspect that what we have here are capsule-summaries of the *real* text, which real text the storytellers would deliver in the souk.Also the manuscript, it seems, has suffered on its way to the translator. I am told that the first story, ""The King of the Two Rivers", is pretty well cut up and broken; so it doesn't now make much sense. Elsewhere every now and again we run across "Lac." for "Lacuna".As to the translator Lyons, he seems to have done okay (I don't have the manuscript so I don't know) but there are some odd decisions here: like Qadi is left alone (it's a judge); and we see "Fustat" where some readers might expect Cairo.The stories are all of different genres and styles. Some stories are amusing: "The One Eyed Man" just cannot get a break, "The Glass-Seller" counts chickens before they hatch, and "the Man Whose Lips Were Cut Off" - despite the title - is hilarious. "Talha, the Son of the Qadi of Fustat" is a romance. Probably the best stories are the adventure-stories, where heroes enter remote locations and fight off robots and monsters. If you're writing Pathfinder / D&D campaigns, "Four Hidden Treasures" is where you want to mine for material.For our distaff readers: Sometimes women are treated well as in "Talha". Sometimes they're deceitful villains. Mostly they seem to be here to please Arab mens' fantasies. "The Forty Girls", for instance... this one goes to forty. (Don't read these to your kids.) Christians - for some reason - come out better. It seems that at the time, Arabic-speakers in Syria and lower Egypt were still mostly Christian, and so the storytellers couldn't be complete bigots about it.To sum up: this book is not for casual readers, and likely was never intended for such. It is a collection of outlines for storytellers. If you want to run a roleplaying-game campaign based on ideas here, then this one is *definitely* for you (you are the qussas of your generation). If you are looking for inspiration to write Arabian-Nights style books of your own: then, you, too, need this book. I'll also suggest it for students of Arab popular culture. But you must understand this as the raw material for such stories; you might not enjoy it so much if you are seeking pure storytelling in the way of a modern novel.

This book tries very much to be in the vein of "The Thousand And One Nights" with the story within the story, but it doesn't quite work and gets confusing real fast.Cover is beautiful, the stories are amusing and some quite fun to read, but the book overall needs concentration to get through. Be prepared to flip back pages to see where you think you are supposed to be.

A "new" treasure of imaginative world literature and a worthy supplement to the 3 volume 1,001 Nights published by Penguin.

Fantastic stories!

Very exciting.

An excellent and fascinating collection of stories from the Middle East, probably near in date to those of the "Thousand and One Nights"; and some of the stories overlap "Nights" stories. Prof. Lyons is an expert in the field of Middle Eastern studies with many books to his name, and he specialises in this sort of tale. His editing, including his writing of the introduction, is very fine. I am much enjoying reading the stories.

Excelente colección nunca traducida anteriormente de cuentos oeientales.

Diese Geschichten von Zauberei, Abenteuern und Schelmenstreichen wurden rein zur Unterhaltung der Leser/Hörer aufgeschrieben, daher sind sie weniger kunstvoll komponiert als die Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht. Immer noch amüsant.

Better than Burton. I always wish the past had been more careful. The handful of tales here make me wish for the >50% that have not survived. A bit pricy, but worthwhile.

If strange ancient tales appeals then this is a great read. People in those far off days were influenced and motivated by very different stumuli.