Where have these stories been for last 33 years? Hidden like a jinni, I guess, in post-Said discomfort with 'orientalism' and professor-fuelled distrust of story-telling. Well, here I am, Anonymous. Late as ever, but now in thrall.

The Malcom Lyons translation of 'Arabian Nights,' published by Penguin, comes in three sizes. The super-size is three volumes of nearly 1000 pages each. The grande is a selection of around 500 pages. I started here, with the small size: the three tales listed in the title, together with the very short frame narrative. Ma'rus is the last story in the sequence, so it is also the conclusion of the frame narrative.

Some things I learned from this book that you will not learn from Disney: The Arabian Nights is *brutally* violent and often charmlessly erotic; the first story is one of two kings being deceived by their wives, who engage in orgies while the kings are on monarchical business trips. So they murder their wives and their wives' lovers, run away together, find a jinni who's trapped a beautiful woman as a sex-slave, only she gets her revenge by waiting until he's asleep, then begging passing men to sleep with her in ways and numbers that make me shudder. One of the kings returns to his country and vows to deflower one virgin per night, then have her killed, so that he'll never be betrayed again. Our hero, Shahrazad, tells stories to save the lives of young girls. In other words, despite everything my modernist and post-modernist professors taught me, it's okay to tell stories, and sometimes it's really, really important to tell good stories.

Also, our earliest evidence for the stories of Ali Baba and Aladdin are in French. They're meant to be translations from oral storytellers, but nobody really knows; in any case, these, the most famous stories in the collection, may or may not actually be part of the collection.

Judar and Ma'rus are both glorious tales that end in horror--right up my alley. I'll be moving on to the grande volume soon. ( )