The Arabian Nights (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classic Collection) Hardcover – September 11, 2009

There are at least two different versions of this book with the same covers. One is the 2006 version the other is the 2016 version. The difference can be seen in a few different areas. The most noticeable is the inside cover art is much different as are is the illustrations inside. The 2006 version also has Arabic writing on the front and back cover. The 2016 replaces that writing with stylized loops and swirls. I guess for the 2016 version they wanted to avoid any controversy that having a book about Arabia with Arabic writing on the cover might cause. The big difference with the illustrations is the 2006 version has very risqué and what could be considered racist pictures, though totally accurate to the details in the story. The 2016 version has illustrations that different events in the book that are very tame and mostly unimportant to the plot. The editors really really changed the illustrations and it was clearly to be more PC despite the fact that this book is absolutely not PC. This book has very sexist, racist, and bigoted views of everyone not of high standing in the Arabic world of the time. The descriptions are very vivid and the pictures in the old version accurately depict what the text describes.The biggest difference is the addition and omission of different stories in each version. I originally received the 2016 version and had read almost half of it before accidentally water damaging the book to the point where it didn't shut all the way. So I ordered another copy and received the 2006 version. I immediately noticed the different illustrations and then noticed they have different stories in each. For the most part the text is exactly the same, word for word, page for page with the exception of the 7th voyage of Sinbad where the 2016 version adds three pages of an 8th voyage that wasn't really a voyage and did nothing to add to the story (so I'm not sure why that was added) and that finished with him calling it the 7th voyage (weird). There are about three different places where different stories were used.So I am currently reading the stories from the old version that weren't in the new version. The old version's alternate stories were better in my opinion, however they're all very engaging (once you get used to the racist, sexist, and bigoted storytelling of the time, region, and author.

A subset but a good cross section. Nice binding and art. I found audio versions for all the stories to let my ears enjoy what my eyes were seeing. Excellent.

perfecto

Burton weaves an entire world, dazzling in its splendor and detail if arguably ethnocentric, e.g., in its depiction of working-class Arabs as thieves, liars, schemers, and plotters--who, in some cases, beat their own mothers until gently "corrected" by the sultan's bastinado. I agree with many of my fellow reviewers that Burton's English can present difficulties--in some cases, exceptional difficulties--though those who can read the King James Bible of 1611 should have no difficulty with Burton's Victorian vocabulary and sentence structures. (To be quite honest, the lack of a single paragraph break is more troubling--foreboding, even, at first sight--than the choice of vocabulary. Just be warned that words that you think you know you really don't know, unless you consider the underlying Greek or Latin roots. For example, "prevent" means "come before," which--while counterintuitive to the modern reader--makes perfect sense insofar as 'pre-' is Latin for 'before' and 'venire' is Latin for 'come'.) Prepare to be seduced, astonished, and bewildered by the fantastic magic of the world that Burton offers us--noting, albeit, that his world is a melange of cultural elements culled from the Arabian peninsula, Iran, India, Turkey, even Morocco--and be admonished that there is plenty of detailed erotic content (sometimes bowdlerized as "they fell to a-dallying with one another" or some such) that is best kept from younger children. Admittedly, the collection of footnotes at the end--and the continual restarting of numbering from tale to tale--can present a hindrance, but this should not present a problem, as the footnotes seldom deal with the actual flow of the story, instead offering obscure (even pedantic) historical or linguistic minutiae. Lastly, as a cultural backdrop against which to evaluate and ponder these stories, consider that the Middle East of Burton's collection represented the erstwhile summit of man's achievements: while illiterate Europeans were slaving away as landed noblemen's serfs, living in rude wooden huts, and fleeing like frightened rats from hordes of invading Mongols or bands of merciless Viking raiders, ninth-century Middle Easterners lived in splendid cities; enjoyed written fluency in their native languages; exercised religious freedom; and engaged in bold, productive research in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and pharmacy at the sultan's behest and sponsorship.