Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Monthly supplement Alexandria re-inscribed No One Sleeps in Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid, tr. Farouk Abdel-Wahab, The American University in Cairo Press, 1999. pp409 Southern Part The Crusades through Muslim eyes The Crusades -- Islamic Perspectives, Carole Hillenbrand, Edinburgh University Press, 1999. pp648 Economic schizophrenia, global style Misr wa Riyah Al-'awlama (Egypt and the Winds of Globalisation), Mahmoud Abdel-Fadil, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, 1999. pp264 Canine ruminations Darourat Al-Kalb fil Masrahiya (The Need for the Dog in the Play), Girgis Shukri, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 2000. pp101 History and parallel history Tumanbay: Al-Sultan Al-Shahid (Tumanbay: The Martyred Sultan), Emad Abu Ghazi, Cairo: Mirette, 1999. pp96 Sun Dancer speaks his sorrow Prison Writings: My Life is my Sun Dance, Leonard Peltier, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1999. pp243 Novel of novels Al-Bashmouri II, Salwa Bakr, Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture. 2000, pp151 Chagall's Arabian Nights: Four Tales from The Thousand and One Nights with lithographs by Marc Chagall, Prestel Verlag, 1999. pp163 Read caption To the editor At a glance A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani Magazines & Periodicals * Al-Kotob: Wughat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints), a Monthly Review of Books, issue No. 14, March, 2000, Cairo: The Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publishing * Aafaq Ifriqiya (African Horizons), quaretrly, Cairo: State Information Service, issue no. 1 * Al-Thaqafa Al-Alamiya (World Culture), bimonthly cultural magazine, Kuwait, no.99 Books * Al-Riwaya fi Nihayat Al-Qarn (The Novel at the End of the Century), Ali El-Ra'i, Cairo: Dar Al-Mustaqbal, 2000, pp371 * Al-Himaya wal-Iqab: Al-Gharb wal-Mas'ala Al-Diniya fil-Sharq Al-Awsat (Protection and Punishment: The West and the Religious Question in the Middle East), Samir Morqos, Cairo: Miret, 2000, pp210 * Al-Wataniya Al-Misriya fil-Asr Al-Hadith (Egyptian Nationalism in Modern Times), Amina Higazi, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 2000, pp555 * Khamriya, Amin El-Ayyouti, Cairo: Al-Hilal, 2000, pp121 * Awlamat Al-Faqr (The Globalisation of Poverty), Michael Chossudovsky trans. Mohamed Mostagir, Cairo: Sotour, 2000, pp328 * Hal Intahat Ostourat Ibn-Khaldoun? (Is the Myth of Ibn-Khaldoun over?), Mahmoud Ismail, Cairo: Dar Qibaa, 2000, pp333 Books is a monthly supplement of Al-Ahram Weekly appearing every second Thursday of the month. We welcome contributions and letters on subjects raised in this supplement. Material may be edited for length and clarity; and should be addressed to Mona Anis, Books Editor, Al-Ahram Weekly, Galaa St., Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt; Faz: +202 578 6089; E-mail: m.anis@ahram.org.eg For advertising call +202-5780233; Fax +202 394 1866 To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.    Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross "Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996

Chagall's Arabian Nights: Four Tales from The Thousand and One Nights with lithographs by Marc Chagall, Prestel Verlag, 1999. pp163

The Thousand and One Nights is a perennial delight, and it continues to appear in many guises and different translations. Now someone has had the happy idea of putting between the covers of one book thirteen lithographs plus some delightful black and white drawings by the Russian artist Marc Chagall illustrating four tales of love from the Arabic classic.

The stories were chosen by the artist himself, and they illustrate various aspects of love, such as the separation of lovers and their reunion and the meaning of death. It should be remembered that even where lovers are eventually happily united, the story of their love is by tradition inevitably ended by the appearance of death, the Destroyer of Delights. Chagall himself had suffered the loss of his own much-loved wife shortly before executing these pictures, and this meant that, as the book's introduction puts it, the artist felt an unusual personal involvement in the work. Chagall said of his art that it was unexpected, oriental, hovering between China and Europe, and the lithographs reproduced in this book possess all the simplicity and uncomplicated magic of the tales themselves.

Of the many translations available, the publishers have chosen to use the nineteenth-century version by Richard Burton for the text. Burton called his translation a plain and literal translation of the Arabian Nights, but in fact it is neither plain nor literal and contains, one suspects, as much of Burton himself as of the original Arabic. His language is archaic and contains words not to be found in most dictionaries. Nevertheless it is a language redolent of the imprint of the supernatural upon the everyday world around us and it does much to recreate the mysterious world of the Arabic masterpiece. Burton's translation has been much criticised for its inaccuracies and for its being gloriously over the top, yet it has delights not to be found in more pedestrian renderings. Let me quote, for example, Burton's description of an old and exceedingly ugly man from the first story in this volume, "The Ebony Horse". He was "an old man, an hundred years of age, with hair-frosted forehead drooping, eyebrows mangy, ears slitten, beard and moustache stained and dyed, eyes red and goggled, cheeks bleached and hollow, flabby nose like an eggplant, face like a cobbler's apron, teeth overlapping and lips like a camel's kidneys, loose and pendulous...sundry of his grinders had been knocked out and his eye-teeth were like the tusks of the Jinn who frighteneth poultry in hen-houses."

As the book runs to 161 pages and the illustrations occupy only a minor portion of it, and as clearly no royalties have been paid for the use of Burton's translation, it being long out of copyright, the publishers might have at least added Burton's name to the cover and the title page. While Chagall's drawings and artwork are delightful, Burton too has made his contribution to this book.

Reviewed by Denys Johnson-Davies

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