An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation.
From its origin, the Thousand and One Nights has been frequently translated, embellished, and transformed.
In his debut book, a fascinating work of cultural and literary history, Horta (Literature/New York Univ. Abu Dhabi) investigates the transmutations of the influential collection of Arabic tales, purportedly invented by Shahrazad to distract her husband, King Shahriyar, from murdering young women in his kingdom. In the second half of the eighth century C.E., Horta asserts, the collection was first translated from Persian into Arabic; since then, additional stories have been added by Arabic and European translators, including the familiar “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and “The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.” “The Thousand and One Nights,” writes the author, “must be understood not as a singular work but as an array of texts” that underwent constant interaction with other cultures, which incorporated into the collection “love stories, trickster tales, historical epics, tales of the supernatural, animal fables, and tales of heroic journeys to foreign lands.” Eventually, it became “one of the key texts in the emergence of world literature in French and English.” Horta focuses on several significant translators: Antoine Galland, the first French translator of the tales; Pre-Raphaelite poet John Payne; British Orientalist Edward William Lane; and the intrepid explorer Richard Francis Burton, who disguised himself as a Muslim pilgrim to travel to Mecca and Medina in 1853. Besides offering a close reading of the translations, Horta draws on a memoir by Diyab, a Syrian traveler who told the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba to Galland; Lane’s notebooks and correspondence; and drafts of Burton’s translation. These sources reveal “partnerships and rivalries” that shaped each translator’s text. In investigating Diyab’s influence, for example, Horta notes, “the context of amorality and violence that characterized Diyad’s travels survives in these tales even after Galland’s stylish adaptation of the stories to meet French expectations of an Oriental tale.”
An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-674-54505-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Nutty and delightful.
Tragicomic first-person tale of what most men want and all women have, as told by a deliciously potty-mouthed dame.
In this too-short debut, the forthright Patsy tells of her realization–during and especially after a protracted, stop-start affair with a gentleman named Peter who showers her alternately with attention and indifference–that biology is destiny only so far as a gal’s willing to play by the accepted rules of the game. Her chosen man seduces her in person and via e-mail, and though the sex is great–and great fun to read about–something is missing: respect, trust, honesty and all the things that can turn desire into love. Part memoir of an affair gone wrong, part empowerment tract for women of all ages (“My book is lovingly, respectfully dedicated to my dear granddaughters and all young girls,” the author writes), Power of Pussy is a surreal first-person narrative enlivened with funny lists, factoids, poetic self-help musings and fascinating tidbits about the mating habits of praying mantes. It’s also a crisp dissection of her romantic misadventure with the aforesaid jerk. He cheats on her (maybe), she responds with jealousy, they separate and then regroup–and repeatedly continue the timeless roundelay. But eventually she gets wise to the fact that while it might be a “man’s world,” she and her sex–like the Athenian ladies in Aristophanes’ fourth-century comedy Lysistrata, who refuse to put out until their men agree end the Peloponnesian War–hold the real power. When Patsy finally realizes that power is hers for the taking, she starts biting back–thus the book was born.
Nutty and delightful.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4257-3826-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Good-humored essays that chronicle an oddball odyssey through the urban outback. It's neither pristine river nor virgin forest that rattles the affable Rockland's wandering bones, but that awkward border—in the wilderness or in the city—where nature and man's handiwork collide. Chair of American Studies at Rutgers Univ., Rockland (A Bliss Case, 1989) undertakes a series of decidedly unscholarly treks across the wilds of the Northeast corridor. In his search for adventure, he boldly goes where no man wants to go: kayaking the south Jersey meadows in January; camping in Manhattan's Inwood Park; biking Route 1, known as ``Death Highway,'' through Newark, N.J. Prowling the forgotten canals and the traffic- and retail- choked highways of Megalopolis, the unlikely ``new frontier'' that sprawls from New York to Philly, he finds a Whitmanesque splendor in the flotsam of the industrial age. Seeking to ``redefine adventure in contemporary terms,'' he brings it within reach of the average schlepper: No triathlete, Rockland knows when to bag the tent and check into a motel. Hiking all 275 blocks of Broadway, as he does in ``Copping a Pee in the Big Apple,'' requires no superhuman effort. It is, however, a charmingly contrarian way to view the world. That charm—and his self-mocking style, boyish enthusiasm, and unrepentant (but harmless) male chauvinism—lend a refreshing tone to the contrapuntal ruminations on wildlife, geology, urban myth, Indian history, and the pleasures of PB&J scattered throughout his love song to postmodern America. Rockland delights in camp as much as any devotee of pop culture, but his inquiry into the things consumer culture values, then abandons (and the snapshots he presents of our deteriorating cities) forms a powerful cautionary tale. Perfect for armchair travelers or urban adventurers looking for new ideas.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8135-2115-7
Page Count: 165
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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