Synopsis of "Arabian Nights and Days"

A sequel of the famous One Thousand and One Nights tales, Arabian Nights and Days written by Naguib Mahfouz - a Nobel Prize awarded Egyptian writer- entails stories of characters' fates after the marriage of Shahriyar and Shahrzad. After the kingdom has regained its peace from the sultan's ravenous murder of hundreds virgins, a new evil arises in the city, turning politicians, innocent merchants, and upper-class men to corrupted beings. Naguib Mahfouz describes the series of rises and falls of rapacious politicians to poor merchant as they transform into good natured or greedy and gluttonous people.

Reviews from Arabian Nights and Days founder:

Opening to a variety of possibilities in Arabic literature, I started to read Arabian Nights and Days and found myself absorbing into the mystic flow of events and twisted tales that keeps me from stop reading. I was never cease to be amazed realizing how amazing the author set up basic words into colorful setting of endless possibilities like genies, flying objects, spells, and invisible caps.

The book is quite famous for unusual and complex Arabic character names, such as Nur al-Din, Shariyar, Sanaan al- Gamali, etc., if you have any confusion or trouble understanding about characters' reference, have a quick look at Characters Lists for further information of the characters. Not only that, but the genies are separated into two categories: Believing Genies- Qumqam and Singam- and Evil Genies- Sahkrabout and Zarmbaha. Believing Genies are beneficial genies who uses their power for an ultimately good purpose by the will of Allah, although sometimes they way which they obtain it can be brutal. On the other side, Evil Genies are those who spread their power upon innocent people for their own pleasure of enjoying humans suffer in crimes and corruption.

Despite the chaos reaping among people, the author puts some very interesting characters who serves as the shadow heroes for the stories, such as a Dark Angel Sahloul the bric-a-brac merchant and the Madman.

I was always happy to see that, each time a character got put under a spell of the Evil Genies, the Madman or Sahloul would come to rescue and aid the innocent persons. Also, I think the author made a good choice on choosing which person should be the religiously-righteous people so good forces balance out evil forces in the city created by the Evil Genie.

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Along side of the fight between light and dark forces, citizens of the city suffer from the dark magic created by the Genies and go through ups and downs in their wealth and career. Reading through each chapter of the book, I learn that the characters of immense heredity wealth quickly came to their down fall of corruption and crimes; while at the same time, characters with humble wealth quickly become rich merchants and holds dominating positions.

Upon reading the book, I have to keep track of lists of those who are spared and those unfortunately not spared from Genie's magics. When looking at the list of those who are spared and not spared, I could not match the common characteristics between those who are spared and not spared since the overall picture is quite random. However, there are actually six criteria that determines whether the character has succeed to obtain his life after committing a crime or falling into the Genie's dark magic. On my blog, I would only like to go over one of the six reasons since each reasons applies a complex connection between each character and the world or the society they harmed.

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