Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

About the Author
Malcolm C. Lyons has been Sir Thomas Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, is a life Fellow of Pembroke College and a specialist in classical Arabic literature. 

Ursula Lyons, formerly an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Oriential Studies at Cambridge University and, since 1976, an Emeritus Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. 

Robert Irwin is a novelist, publisher, Middle Eastern Editor of the TLS and author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion, among many other books