Fantasy · Folk tales
The Arabian Nights
Scheherazade tells a story every night to save her life: Aladdin, Sindbad the Sailor, the fisherman and the genie, and many more.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A story a night
A sultan, betrayed by his wife, decides to marry a new bride every day and have her put to death the next morning. Scheherazade, the clever daughter of his grand vizier, volunteers to marry him. On their wedding night she begins a story and stops at the most exciting moment, so the sultan spares her for one more night to hear the end. One story leads to another, often a story inside a story inside a story. Andrew Lang’s selection, published in 1898, includes some of the most famous: the fisherman and the genie in a sealed copper jar, the seven voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, the enchanted horse, and Aladdin and the wonderful lamp.
Why it works for learners
The tales are short, varied and full of the things that make stories easy to follow: clear wishes, clever tricks, magic objects, voyages by sea and by air, and endings that reward the good and punish the greedy. The vocabulary is merchants and markets, palaces and caves, gold, jewels, ships, storms, genies and sultans. Because each tale is complete, you can stop after any one. One curiosity: Aladdin, now the most famous tale of all, isn’t found in the oldest Arabic manuscripts; it entered the collection through Antoine Galland’s French translation in the early 1700s.
Which level to start at
A2 is a good start, one tale at a time. B1 keeps more of the nested stories and the descriptions of feasts and palaces. For learners of Arabic these stories are a natural choice: Lexo’s Arabic is Modern Standard Arabic, with full vowel marks at A2 and B1, and it reads right to left, with right-to-left page turns.
Read next
- Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Europe’s great collection of folk tales
- Andersen’s Fairy Tales, stories one man invented
- The Odyssey, the voyages Lang thought Sindbad’s might echo