THE THOUSAND ONE NIGHT

Book name- the thousand one night

Original Title | Alf laylah wa laylah

 Original Language | Arabic First Published | c. 850

 Source | from Hazar Afsanah (A Thousand Tales)

Introduction

 By Peter Boxall, General Editor There is an ancient connection between death, storytelling, and the number 1001. Since The Thousand and One Nights, the number has had a mythical, deathly resonance. Sheherezade, the storyteller of the Nights, recounts her tales, over a thousand and one long Arabian evenings, to her king and would-be executioner, as a means of staving off the moment of her own death. Each night the king intends to kill her, but Scheherezade conjures such succulent fragments of prose that he is compelled to let her live another day, so that he can steal from her another, subsequent night, and another instalment in her endless, freewheeling fiction. The infinitely open, unresolvable quality of Scheherezade’s storytelling continues to lend the number 1001 something of the mathematical sublime, of the countless or the unlimited. But at the same time, the number also maintains the mortal urgency of Scheherezade’s plight. As much as it suggests endless expanse, the number speaks also of precision, and of a cramped, urgent brevity. Scheherezade’s stories are still often translated as The Thousand Nights and One Night, emphasizing this uneasy proximity, in the number itself, between the expansive and the contracted, the many and the one. Over the great stretch of the thousand and one nights, Scheherezade always has only one night to live; as the evenings glide smoothly away, death is a constant companion, lending to each passing night the peculiar vividness of the final moment, lending the whole, living, proliferating work the unmistakable savor of last things. In compiling the following list of 1001 books you must read before you die, I have found myself very much in the grip of this Scheherezadian paradox. The story of the novel, as it is told here, is a long and rambling affair, full of surprising turns, and unlikely subplots. Weaving this multi-layered tale through reference to 1001 titles has seemed, from the beginning, to be a gargantuan task, and a task that could never end. The final list, including all the novels that one must read and excluding all the ones that it is safe to leave unread, could of course never be drawn up, just as Scheherezade’s stories still have not ended, and will never end, this side of the knowable. But at the same time, the limits that the number has pressed upon me are cruel and narrow. One thousand and one is after all such a small number, given the extent of the subject matter. Each title here has to fight for its slender berth, and each entry is fueled by a certain concentrated energy, a struggle to make room for itself as desperate as if life depended upon it. Each novel is a work that you must read before you die, and while death is always a distant prospect, it is also always imminent, lurking in the shadows of every instant. Something you must do before you die might feel like a lazy aspiration, but it is also something you have to do in a hurry, or even now. This contradiction between the roomy and the constricted can be felt moving throughout this book. The novel is represented here in all its variety, its inventiveness, its wit, as it stretches from the ancients—from Aesop, Ovid, Chariton—to the contemporary fiction of Amis, DeLillo, or Houellebecq. But at the same time the novel as a complete entity is forever beyond our grasp, refusing to be fully systematized, always something more than the sum of its parts. Indeed, it might be argued that the novel, as a stable, recognizable object, does not really exist. There is no consensus among readers and critics about when the novel as a form came into being; there is no definite boundary that separates a novel from a short story, from a novella, from a prose poem, from autobiography, witness testimony, or journalism, from a fable, or a myth, or a legend. And there is certainly no consensus concerning how one distinguishes between the trashy novel and the literary masterpiece. Rather, the novel as a form, and as a body of work, is an inspired idea that we can only grasp fleetingly, fragmentarily; an idea that makes prose fiction possible, but that is also itself something of a fiction. The list that is offered here, then, does not seek to be a new canon, and does not claim to define or exhaust the novel. Rather, it is a list that lives in the midst of the contradiction between the comprehensive and the partial. It is a list that is animated by the spirit of the novel, by a love for what the novel is and does, but which nevertheless does not hope or aim to capture it, to sum it up, or put it to bed. Prose fiction lives in so many guises and different languages, across so many nations and centuries, that a list like this will always, and should always, be marked, formed, and deformed by what it leaves out. Rather than defending its borders against that which it excludes, this book offers itself as a snapshot of the novel, one story among others that one can tell about its history. The book is made up of entries from over 100 contributors—a cross-section of the international reading community, including critics, academics, novelists, poets, literary journalists—and the list is generated to a large degree from what this diverse group of readers tells us about what the novel looks like today. As such, this book reflects a set of priorities that are shared by today’s readers, a certain understanding of where the novel comes from, a particular kind of passion for reading. But it does so in a spirit of love for the diversity and endlessness of the possibilities of fiction, rather than in any desire to separate the quality from the rabble, the wheat from the chaff. It speaks of a thousand and one things, but with a breathless urgency that derives partly from the haunting knowledge of how many other things there are to be said, how many other novels there are to be read, how short even the longest story can feel when faced with the endlessness of storytelling. This combination of the long and the short, the exhaustive and the partial, is perhaps nowhere more evident in this book than at the level of each individual entry. There is clearly something insane about writing 300 words—the approximate length of each of these entries—on something as manymansioned and multi-textured as a novel. Even a thin slip of prose, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper , surely cannot be condensed into 300 words, so what of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, or Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, or Proust’s À la recherche—novels that run into thousands of pages? What can 300 words hope to do in the face of such monsters? This is a question that vexed me, somewhat, at the start of this project. But as the book goes to press, it strikes me that the brevity of each of these entries is this book’s greatest strength. What these entries seek to do is neither to offer a full critique of each title, nor to give us a flavor of the prose, nor even simply to provide a canned plot synopsis. What each entry does is to respond, with the cramped urgency of a deathbed confession, to what makes each novel compelling, to what it is about each novel that makes one absolutely need to read it. There is no other format that I can think of that could deliver this kind of entreaty more effectively, or with a more thrilling intensity. One contributor, in discussing with me what these entries might hope to achieve, hit upon a phrase that for me has come to define what this book does. He said that each entry might be thought of as a “micro-event,” a miniaturized but complete reading experience that contains within it something of the boundlessness of the novel. I have many people to thank for their help over the last months. Working on this project has been an extraordinary pleasure, mostly because of the incredible enthusiasm and goodwill shown by everybody who has been a part of it. My first debt of gratitude is to all of the contributors. I have been moved by how promptly and willingly all of the contributors have responded to the demands of this book, and I have been staggered by the sheer quality and imaginative exuberance of the work that has been produced. This really has been a labor of love and friendship, so thank you. There are also many, many people who contributed to the production of this book, but who are not listed as contributors. Maria Lauret was unable to be in the book, but I thank her for her help, and remember Paul Roth with love and sorrow. I have had countless discussions, over unnumbered kitchen tables, about what titles should be in this list, and I thank everybody who has made suggestions to me. I would particularly like to thank Alistair Davies, Norman Vance, Rose Gaynor, members of my family in Cardiff and London, in the U.S. and Turkey, and the entirety of the Jordan family. I am deeply grateful to Liz Wyse, whose clear intelligence and calm good humor made even the difficult moments a pleasure. Jenny Doubt saw this book through to publication with an extraordinary, unflappable professionalism, and with imaginative flair. Witnessing her ability to deal with the manifold pressures that a project like this produces in its final stages has left me gasping with admiration. The Art Director Tristan de Lancey and Picture Researcher Maria Gibbs have done an incredible job, and I am grateful to everybody at Quintet, in particular Jane Laing and Judith More. As always, my love and thanks go to the Boxall Jordans; to Hannah, who has been a central part of this project from the beginning, and to Ava and Laurie, for whom reading is a transformative pleasure that is only now beginning. Working on this book has taught me a great deal about the novel. It has also taught me something about how contagious the love of books is, how much excitement, friendship, and pleasure they produce. I hope that some of the excitement, and some of the love and friendship, that went into making this book will be communicated in the reading of it.

Contributors 

Vance Adair (VA) is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling. He has written on critical theory and early modern drama. Rhalou Allerhand (RA) is a journalist who studied English at the University of the West of England. She also writes fiction. Jordan Anderson (JA) is a postgraduate student at King’s College London and a graduate of Harvard University. He has published on the work of Thomas Hardy. Carlos G. Aragón (CA) is a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham. He is working on a dissertation about Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s “Cycle of Havana Centre.” Susanna Araujo (SA) Derek Attridge (DA) has published books on the works of James Joyce. He is a Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at University of York. Sally Bayley (SB) Lorenzo Bellettini (LB) is completing a PhD on Arthur Schnitzler at Cambridge University. He is president of Cambridge University Creative Writing Club. Alvin Birdi (ABi) is a former economist and has held lecturing posts at the Universities of Manchester and Middlesex. He is completing a DPhil on Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee at the University of Sussex. Laura Birrell (LBi) Andrew Blades (ABl) is undertaking a DPhil on masculine identity in AIDS literature. He reviews theater for the Stage newspaper. Maria-Dolores Albiac Blanco (M-DAB) is Professor of Spanish Literature at the Univesity of Zaragoza and has published works mainly on eighteenth-century subjects. María del Pilar Blanco (MPB) is completing her doctorate on American literature and film in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. Vicki Blud (VB) received a Masters degree in English Literature from King’s College London. She will now specialize in medieval literature and critical theory. Anna Bogen (AB) is a DPhil candidate at the University of Sussex. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis on early twentiethcentury fiction and women’s education. She has published extensively on children’s literature, the nineteenth-century bildungsroman, and the work of Virginia Woolf. Dr. Peter Boxall (PB) is a Senior Lecturer in English literature at the University of Sussex. He has published widely on twentiethcentury fiction and drama. Dr. Kate Briggs (KB) is a Research Fellow in Modern Languages and Literatures at Trinity College, Dublin. Marko Cindric (MCi) Monika Class (MC) is a doctoralstudent at Balliol College, Oxford, working on a thesis on nineteenth-century British writers. Liam Connell (LC) teaches literature at the University of Hertfordshire. His research interests are in postcolonial writing, modernism and popular literature. Clare Connors (CC) is Lecturer in English at the Queen’s College, Oxford, where she teaches and writes about Victorian and modern literature and literary theory. Philip Contos (PC) studied English and Italian literature at Columbia and Oxford universities. He currently works as an editor in London. Jennifer Cooke (JC) is completing a thesis on the plague in texts and culture. Ailsa Cox (ACo) Vybarr Cregan-Reid (VC-R) Abi Curtis (AC) is completing a PhD at the University of Sussex. She has published fiction and poetry and was awarded an Eric Gregory Award for poetry in 2004. Ulf Dantanus (UD) is Director of Studies for the Gothenburg Program at the University of Sussex. He has postgraduate degrees from Trinity College Dublin and Göteborg University. Jean Demerliac (JD) is a writer and editor who has written and translated Herman Melville. He has contributed to many publications and multimedia projects at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Sarah Dillon (SD) Lucy Dixon (LD) studied English literature and Afrikaans at Stellenbosch University. Margaret Anne Doody (MD) is John and Barbara Glynn Family Professor of Literature at the University of Notre Dame. She has written six novels and many critical works. Jenny Doubt (JSD) completed her MA at the University of Sussex in postcolonial literature. She is one of the Founding Editors of Transgressions, a twentieth-century interdisciplinary humanities journal. Karen D’Souza (KDS) Lizzie Enfield (LE) Fabriano Fabbri (FF) is lecturer in contemporary art techniques at the University of Bologna. He has always been interested in the connections between art and mass culture. Anna Foca (AF) Seb Franklin (SF) Daniel Mesa Gancedo (DMG) is a Lecturer in Latin American literature at the University of Zaragoza. His works include Similar Strangers; the Artificial Character and the Narrative Contrivance in Latin American literature (2002). Andrzej Gasiorek (AG) is a Reader in twentieth-century English literature at the University of Birmingham, where he has been teaching for the last twelve years. He is the author of Postwar British Fiction: Realism and After (1995), Wyndham Lewis and Modernism (2004), and J. G. Ballard (2005). Diana Gobel (DG) Having completed her DPhil in Russian History at Oxford, Diana Göbel has worked as a freelance copy editor, researcher, and translator. Richard Godden (RG) teaches American Literature in the Department of American Studies at the University of Sussex. He has published Fictions of Capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer (1990), and Fictions of Labor: William Faulkner and the South’s Long Revolution (1997). Jordi Gracia (JGG) is Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Barcelona and works mainly on twentieth-century Spanish literature. Among his works is The Silent Resistance: Fascism and Culture in Spain (Anagrama Essay Prize, 2004). Reg Grant (RegG) is a freelance writer. He has an extensive knowledge of modern European literature, especially post–Second World War French fiction. Frederik Green (FG) is a PhD candidate in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. His main interests are in Chinese and Japanese literature. He is currently writing a dissertation on the Republican-period writer Xu Xu. Christopher C. Gregory-Guider (CG-G) teaches twentieth-century literature and culture at the University of Sussex. He has published articles on W. G. Sebald, Iain Sinclair, photography, trauma, and memory. Other interests include narrative and filmic representation of mental illness and the cultural history of walking. Eleanor Gregory-Guider (EG-G) currently lives in Sussex. She received a BA (Hons) in English and History from the University of Texas at Austin and a MA in eighteenth-century studies, focusing on literature and art history from the University of York. Agnieszka Gutthy (AGu) is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Southeastern Louisiana University. She specializes in comparative literature, Basque, and Kashubian studies. She also writes on Polish and Spanish literature. Andrew Hadfield (AH) is Professor of English at the University of Sussex where he teaches Renaissance literature and contemporary literature and theory. His most recent book is Shakespeare and Republicanism (2005). He has written essays on Saul Bellow and T. H. White, and is a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. Friederike Hahn (FH) has an MA in Shakespearean Studies from King’s College London and is currently completing her PdD there. She also volunteers at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Esme Floyd Hall (EH) is a writer who lives and works in Brighton. She has published three nonfiction titles with Carlton Books and has contributed to various newspapers and magazines, including Sunday Times Style, Observer, She, and Zest. Philip Hall (PH) was born in New Zealand, where he earned a degree in English literature and a Masters degree in Law. He currently lives and works in London, and writes on a variety of subjects. James Harrison (JHa) is a writer and book editor who now only reads hardbacks with large type and generous spacing. Thus, he has read (with pleasure) Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest. Doug Haynes (DH) is a Lecturer in American Literature at Sussex University. He specializes in late twentieth-century American writing. He has published work on the novelists Thomas Pynchon and William Burroughs and has written on Surrealist black humor. Thomas Healy (TH) is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of three critical studies, editor of two collections of essays, and co-editor of The Arnold Anthology of British and Irish Literature in English. Jon Hughes (JH) is a Lecturer in German at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of a monograph on the work of Joseph Roth, and has published on twentieth-century German/Austrian literature and film. Rowland Hughes (RH) is a Lecturer in English literature at the University of Hertfordshire, where he teaches literature from the Renaissance to today. His interests lie in eighteenth and nineteenth-century American literature and Anglo-American cinema. Jessica Hurley (JHu) is a doctoralstudent at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in contemporary American and British fiction, performance, and theory. Haewon Hwang (HH) When studying Russian literature, Haewon was forewarned that she would end up a plumber. She is now gladly exploring sewers in the course of researching underground spaces. Bianca Jackson (BJ) is a doctoral candidate writing on the sexually dissident subject in contemporary Indian Anglophone literature at the University of Oxford. David James (DJ) is associate tutor in the Department of English at the University of Sussex, where he wrote a DPhil on the evolution of a poetics of place and perception in British fiction from 1970 to the present. Dr. Meg Jensen (MJ) is Head of the Department of Creative Writing at Kingston University, where she also lectures on nineteenth and twentieth-century English and American literature. Iva Jevtic (IJ) Carole Jones (CJ) teaches in the School of English, Trinity College. She has published articles on Scottish fiction and the representation of masculinity in recent writing. Gwenyth Jones (GJ) lives in London, where she has recently completed a PhD on the literature of Budapest and teaches Hungarian literature to undergraduates. Thomas Jones (TEJ) is an editor at the London Review of Books. Hannah Jordan (HJ) is a freelance writer and critic. She is working on a children’s novel, entitled A Bohemian Christmas. Jinan Joudeh (JLSJ) has studied English and American Literature at Duke, Sussex, and Yale universities. She is currently working on modernist American fiction in the context of friendship, marriage, and theory. Lara Kavanagh (LK) is currently completing an MA in Twentieth Century Literature at King’s. Christine Kerr (CK) was born in England and received her PhD from the University of Sussex. She has taught English literature in Europe, Africa, and Asia and is a faculty member at Champlain College in Montréal. Kumiko Kiuchi (KK) is a DPhilstudent in the English Literature Department at the University of Sussex. She was awarded her BA and one of her MAs in Japan. Her research interests include the problem of translation, modernism, the philosophy of language, and the work of Samuel Beckett. Joanna Kosty (JK) Andrea Kowalski (AK) is a journalist working for the BBC World Service. In 2000, she received a Masters degree from the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) in London. Katya Krylova (KKr) is a PhD student in the Department of German at Cambridge University. Specializing in post-war German literature, her thesis focuses on the legacy of the Second World War, topography and identity in the works of Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard. Karl Lampl (KL) was born in Lilienfeld, Austria and studied at the University of Vienna. After moving to Canada he settled in Montreal, where he graduated from Concordia University. Laura Lankester (LL) has a MA in English Literature from University College London. She currently works for a London publisher and writes reviews. Anthony Leaker (AL) is studying twentieth-century America and European literature. He has taught at the University of Paris. Vicky Lebeau (VL) is Reader in English at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Lost Angels: psychoanalysis and cinema (1995), Psychoanalysis and cinema: the play of shadows (2001). Hoyul Lee (Hoy) Maria Lopes da Silva (ML) specializes in critical theory and Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African literature. She received a MA from the University of Cambridge and is completing a PhD on Florbela Espanca. Sophie Lucas (SL) studied Philosophy at the University of Bordeaux. Based in Paris, she now teaches French as a foreign language. Graeme Macdonald (GM) is Lecturer in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at The University of Warwick, England. Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson (HM) is Reader in North American literature at the University of Central Lancashire. She is the author of Women’s Movement (2000) and the co-editor of Transatlantic Studies (2000), and Britain and the Americas (2005). Martha Magor (MaM) Muireann Maguire (MuM) José-Carlos Mainer (JCM) is Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Zaragoza. Among his publications are The Silver Age 1902–1939 (1975, re-edited in 1987), Modernism and 98 (1979), History, Literature, Society (1990), Uncontrolled Literature (2000), and Philology in Purgatory (2003). Peter Manson (PM) Laura Marcus (LM) is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. She has published on nineteenth and twentieth-century literature. She has co-edited The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. Victoria Margree (VM) received her DPhil in English Literature from the University of Sussex. She lectures at Sussex and the University of Brighton. Nicky Marsh (NM) works at the University of Southampton, where she is director of the Center for Cultural Poetics. Her published work has appeared in journals including New Formations, Postmodern Culture, Feminist Review, and Wasafari. Louise Marshall (LMar) is a Lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature at the University of Wales. Her research focuses on drama. Louise’s passion for eighteenth-century literature developed as an undergrad as a result of her first encounter with Smollet’s Humphrey Clinker. Rosalie Marshall (RMa) has a BA in French and Scandinavian Studies, and she has returned to higher education to do a PhD in French Caribbean Literature. Her career has included teaching modern languages. Andrew Maunder (AM) Maren Meinhardt (MM) is Science and Psychology Editor at the Times Literary Supplement. She is writing a biography of Alexander von Humboldt. Dr. Ronan McDonald (RM) is Director of the Samuel Beckett International Foundation and Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Reading. His publications include Tragedy and Irish Literature (2002) and the Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett (2005), as well as articles and reviews. Dr. Patricia McManus (PMcM) teaches courses on English literary and cultural history at the University of Sussex. She is currently writing a book on the English novel from 1920–1940. Geoffrey Mills (GMi) studied English at Reading and London Universities and currently works as an English teacher in Worcestershire. He writes both poetry and prose, some of which has been published. Drew Milne (DM) is the Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama and Poetry, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. He has edited Marxist Literary Theory and Modern Critical Thought. His novel is entitled The Prada Meinhof Gang. Jacob Moerman (JaM) Pauline Morgan (PMB) completed a doctoral thesis on Elizabeth Bowen at the University of Sussex. Her literary research has explored psychoanalysis, ghosts, and music. Jonathan Morton (JM) is a History teacher living in Oxford. He writes poetry, plays music, and makes short films and documentaries. He studied History and English literature and creative writing at U.E.A in Norwich and did an MA in Modern European History. Domingo Ródenas de Moya (DRM) is Professor of Spanish and European Literature at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He has published The Mirrors of the Novelist and has edited many contemporary classics. Alan Munton (AMu) is Archivist at the University of Plymouth, and a Lecturer in English. His Cambridge doctorate on Wyndham Lewis featured the first full discussion of Lewis’ The Childermass, summarized here. Robin Musumeci (RMu) Salvatore Musumeci (SMu) received a Masters degree in history from Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut). He is currently completing a PhD dissertation at Queen Mary, University of London. Paul Myerscough (PMy) is an editor at the London Review of Books. Stratos C. Myrogiannis (SMy) received his MPhil from the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and started his PhD on the Greek Enlightenment at Cambridge in 2005. María Ángeles Naval (MAN) is a Professor at the Department of Spanish Philology (Spanish and Hispanic Literatures) of the University of Zaragoza. Her research has concentrated on the Spanish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in particular on poetry since 1868. Stephanie Newell (SN) lectures in postcolonial literature at the University of Sussex. She specializes in West African literature and African popular culture, and her publications include Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana: “How to Play the Game of Life”, West African Literatures: Ways of Reading. Julian Patrick (JP) is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto where he teaches early modern literature, literary theory, and psychoanalysis in the Department of English and the Literary Studies Program. He is also working on the overlap between traditional mimesis and new-style representation in early modern literature. Andrew Pepper (AP) is a Lecturer in English and American literature at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of The Contemporary American Crime Novel (2000) and the co-author of American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film (2005). His first novel is The Last Days of Newgate. Irma Perttula (IP) is researching the grotesque and carnivalization in Finnish literature. She teaches Finnish literature courses at the University of Helsinki and the Open University. Roberta Piazza (RPi) is a Lecturer in Modern Languages at the University of Sussex, where she has taught translation and modern Italian and European literatures. After completing an American doctorate and an MPhil in Linguistics, she is now working on a DPhil on the dialogue of Italian cinema. Fiona Plowman (FP) studied English literature at the University of London. She is a former commissioning editor and reviewer for The Good Book Guide magazine. She currently works as a freelance editor and writer. David Punter (DP) is Professor of English at the University of Bristol, where he is also Research Director for the Faculty of Arts. He has published extensively on Gothic and Romantic literature; on contemporary writing; and on literary theory, psychoanalysis, and the postcolonial, as well as four small volumes of poetry. Robin Purves (RP) is a Lecturer in English literature at the University of Central Lancashire. He has published articles on nineteenthcentury French writing, contemporary poetry and philosophy, and co-edited a special issue of the Edinburgh Review. Along with Peter Manson, he runs a press, Object Permanence. Vincent Quinn (VQ) Santiago del Rey (SR) is an editor, cultural journalist, and literary critic. Vera Rich (VR) is a writer and translator, specializing in the literature of Ukraine and Belarus. She is a former General Secretary of the Anglo-Ukrainian Society and Deputy Editor of The Ukrainian Review. Oscar Rickett (OR) is a freelance writer and amateur clarinetist from London. He has written on twentieth-century American literature, nineteenth-century English literature, and modern Argentina. Dr. Ben Roberts (BR) teaches at the University of Bradford. His main areas of interest are cultural theories of technology and counterfeit money in literature. Dr. Anne Rowe (AR) is a Senior Lecturer at Kingston University. She is the author of Salvation by Art: The Visual Arts and the Novels of Iris Murdoch and is also the Director of the Center for Iris Murdoch Studies at Kingston University. In addition to her teaching, she is the European Director of the Iris Murdoch Society and European Editor of the Iris Murdoch News Letter. Nicholas Royle (NWor) is Professor of English Literature at the University of Sussex. His major works include E. M. Forster (1999) and The Uncanny (2003). He is joint editor of the Oxford Literary Review. David Rush (DR) Martin Ryle (MR) teaches English and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, and has particular research interests in Irish writing and contemporary fiction. His critical writing includes work on George Gissing and Michel Houellebecq. Darrow Schecter (DSch) completed a doctorate on Antonio Gramsci at the University of Oxford. He was a British Academy Post- Doctoral Fellow, and is currently a Reader in Intellectual History in the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex. He has written several books on the subjects of European intellectual history and political theory. Tobias Selin (TSe) was born in Sweden and studied Mechanical Engineering and the Philosophy of Science. After working as an editor in London for a couple of years, he returned to Sweden and currently works in engineering. Christina Sevdali (CSe) is currently finishing her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Her first degree was in Ancient and Modern Greek literature. She enjoys writing about cinema and singing jazz. Elaine Shatenstein (ES) is a freelance book reviewer, newspaper columnist, and feature writer, as well as a guest speaker for literary groups, a writing instructor, and an editor. She has previously worked in broadcasting and film as a writer and producer, and was published in an anthology of socialsatire. John Shire (JS) is a writer and photographer, and his short fiction has appeared in a number of U.K. and U.S. publications. In addition to this work, he has a virtual hand in two websites; www.libraryofthesphinx.co.uk and Invocations Press. Sadly, a degree in English Literature and Philosophy. Tom Smith (TS) is a Lecturer at the Faculty of International Business, in the University of Applied Sciences Furtwangen. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and he has also won an Ian St. James Award. He already has an MA in Creative Writing and is currently working toward a DPhil at Sussex University. Daniel Soar (DSoa) works as an editor at the London Review of Books. Matthew Sperling (MS) David Steuer (DS) Simon Stevenson (SS) is an Assistant Professor of English at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan where he teaches literature and literary theory. Esther MacCallum Stewart (EMcCS) Luis Sundqvist (LS) Céline Surprenant (CS) is a Senior Lecturer in French in the English Department at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Freud’s Mass Psychology: Questions of Scale (2003). She has also translated Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Speculative Remark (2001). Theodora Sutcliffe (TSu) is a journalist and copywriter who also writes fiction. Julie Sutherland (JuS) completed her PhD in English studies and seventeenth-century studies at the University of Durham. She was born in Canada and returned there to become Professor of Early Modern Drama at Atlantic Baptist University. Keston Sutherland (KS) is a Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Antifreeze, The Rictus Flag, Neutrality and several other books of poetry. He edits the occult leftist journal Quid, the Q? series of noise and rant CD-Rs, and coedits Barque Press. Bharat Tandon (BT) is College Lector and Director of Studies in English Literature at Jesus College, Cambridge, and teaches British and American literature. Aside from his teaching duties, he writes regularly on contemporary British and American fiction and cinema for the Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph. Jenny Bourne Taylor (JBT) is a Reader in English at the University of Sussex. She has written extensively on nineteenth-century literature and culture. She has edited George Gissing: Voices of the Unclassed (2005), ans The Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins (2006). Philip Terry (PT) Samuel Thomas (SamT) completed his DPhil in English Literature at the University of Sussex. His research interests include Thomas Pynchon, the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and contemporary Eastern European writing. Sophie Thomas (ST) is a Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex, where she teaches a range of subjects, including eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature, and on MA programs in Critical Theory, and Literature and Visual Culture. Dale Townshend (DaleT) is Thesia Stuftung Research Fellow in the Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling. He has co-edited four volumes in the Gothic: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies series (2004). His monograph, The Orders of Gothic, is published by AMS Press. David Towsey (DT) is a Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford University, and he also teaches for the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. He has published on literary theory and Romantic literature, and is currently working on late Victorian and Edwardian writings as part of a larger study of Walter de la Mare’s short stories. David Tucker (DTu) Garth Twa (GT) is the author of a short story collection called Durable Beauty. He is also an award-winning filmmaker, and is currently hard at work on his second book, My Ice Age, which describes both his youth in an Eskimo settlement on the Arctic Circle and his years struggling on the outer fringes of Hollywood. Miriam van der Valk (MvdV) gained an MA in Philosophy at Amsterdam University, specializing in the theory of psychoanalysis and feminist politics. Cedric Watts (CW) is Research Professor of English Literature at the University of Sussex. His many publications include books on Shakespeare, Keats, Cunninghame Graham, Joseph Conrad, and Graham Greene. He is also the co-author (along with John Sutherland) of Henry V, War Criminal? and Other Shakespeare Puzzles. Claire Watts (ClW) is a writer and a freelance editor with a degree in French from the University of London. She also runs her local school library. Manuela Wedgwood (MWd) Andreea Weisl-Shaw (AW) is originally from Romania. She studied French and Spanish at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, where she is now completing a PhD in Medieval French and Spanish Literature. She has recently been appointed Fellow and College Lecturer in Spanish at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Gabriel Wernstedt (GW) Juliet Wightman (JW) has taught English Studies at the University of Stirling for several years. Her research focuses closely on language and violence, making particular reference to Renaissance literature and drama. Ilana Wistinetzki (IW) received an MPhil degree in classical Chinese literature from Yale University in 2000. She then went on to teach modern Hebrew at both Yale and Beijing universities. Tara Woolnough (TW) lives and works in London. She obtained a degree in Classics, and an MA. She now works as an editor and writer in book publishing. Marcus Wood (MW).

THE THOUSAND ONE NIGHT

The binding from a 1908 edition of the Nights stylishly captures the exoticism that attracted Westerners to tales of the East. The tales that make up the collection known to us as The Thousand and One Nights are some of the most powerful, resonant works of fiction in the history of storytelling. The tales, told over a thousand and one nights by Sheherazade to King Shahryar, include foundational narratives such as “Sinbad,” “Aladdin,” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” These stories have an uncanny capacity to endure. But while the tales of The Thousand and One Nights are remarkable for their familiarity and their currency, perhaps their most important legacy is the concept of narrative itself that emerges from them. It is in the Nights that an underlying, generative connection is fashioned between narrative, sex, and death—a connection that has remained at the wellspring of prose fiction ever since. King Shahryar is in the unseemly habit of deflowering and killing a virgin on a nightly basis, and the Nights opens with Sheherazade lining up to be the king’s next victim. Determined not to meet with such a fate, Sheherazade contrives to tell the king stories; in accordance with her plan, they prove so compelling, so erotic, so luscious and provocative, that at the end of the night, he cannot bring himself to kill her. Each night ends with a tale unfinished, and each night the king grants her a stay of execution, so that he might hear the conclusion. But the storytelling that Sheherazade invents, in order to stay alive, is a kind of storytelling that is not able to end, that never reaches a climax. Rather, the stories are inhabited by a kind of insatiable desire, an open unfinishedness that keeps us reading and panting, eager for more, just as King Shahryar listens and pants. The eroticism of the tales, their exotic, charged texture, derives from this desirousness, this endless trembling on the point both of climax, and of death. PB. 

HINDI-BOOKS

us Wood (MW)