ABSTRACT
In her contribution to the millennial issue of the New York Times, the short story writer, editor and critic A. S. Byatt was asked to write about "The Best Story". One of the afterlives of the Thousand and One Nights can be found in "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye", from the title piece of Byatt's 1994 collection of stories. The open ending recurs in another of Byatt's stories portraying the transnational encounter between East and West, "Loss of Face", from Sugar & Other Stories, which places a Western protagonist in an Eastern setting, offering a lesson on "endless human diversity". In the Turkish setting, Gillian undergoes a process of personal growth and self-discovery that enables Byatt to explore what Celia Wallhead has described as "women's problems of identity, gender, power, desire, and finally, creativity". Such a process is articulated through a number of experiences both in realistic dimension of touristic enjoyment of Turkish culture and academic event of the conference.
