The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Vol. 1

Betrayed by his first wife, King Shahryar resolves to marry a new bride each night and have her executed by dawn, until the vizier's daughter Shahrazad volunteers herself and begins a story so gripping that the king cannot bear to silence her before its end. Night after night, she spins tales of genies bound in bottles, merchants who cross paths with sorcerers, and princes transformed to stone, each story folding into the next, buying herself another day of life. Sir Richard Burton's celebrated, unexpurgated translation of the Arabian Nights opens this first volume with the storytelling frame and its earliest, most enduring tales.