ABSTRACT
Writing a book about the Thousand and one nights is a hazardous undertaking. The risks are not merely professional: every student of the Thousand and one nights has to confront the traditional warning that nobody can read the complete work and survive it; even if he succeeds in reading all the tales, in the end he will be a different person. He will never be the same again. This fear of the hidden powers of the Thousand and one nights is connected to the apparent endlessness of the cycle and its explicit function as a force of transformation. It is Shahraza-d’s intention to realize the transformation of Shahriya-r, by storytelling, and, through him, of the reader, who will be taught to look at life from a new perspective. The characteristic fluidity of the Thousand and one nights is reflected in its textual history. The corpus of texts that are in some way or another related to the Thousand and one nights is still expanding, obscuring rather than clarifying the philological history of the work. The collections and separate tales have taken on many guises in the course of time, adapting themselves to cultural fashions and tastes, to historical contexts and newly invented media. There is no end to the Thousand and one nights and anyone who enters the world of Shahraza-d may be lured into an inextricable maze, in which he will in vain look for a secure exit.
