A take on One Thousand and One Nights in which Shaherazade, at the center of her own story, uses wit and political mastery to navigate opulent palaces brimming with treachery and the perils of the Third Crusade as her Persian homeland teeters on the brink of destruction.
The book does not merely produce effects comparable to those derived from the original text. Ahmed defamiliarises and dismantles what we think we know of Nights, so that our understanding and interaction with it evolve, too.
This snow globe of an alternate universe evokes wonder. But the historical world that Ahmed’s Shaherazade occupies is steadfastly realist. Realism can have its own magic, but I fear the author placed too many constraints on Shaherazade’s story as she pursued fidelity to her chosen historical setting.
