To prepare it, al-Shaykh read three Arabic editions in full-including the "authoritative" edition, prepared by scholar Muhsin Mahdi, from a 14th-century Syrian source (as well as its English translation). This is why Hanan al-Shaykh's new edition (with an introduction by Mary Gaitskill, an American master of writing about sexual violence) is such a gift. We tend to remember Shahrazad-or, more popularly, Scheherazade-but very few of the stories she tells. The inventive framing tends to eclipse the rest of the individual stories, though, in cultural consciousness. Shahrazad outsmarts the king by telling him a story each night before he goes to sleep she ends each tale on a cliffhanger in order to maintain suspense within an episodic structure-and, of course, to keep her husband hooked and herself alive. One thing all versions share, however, is a sophisticated narrative device: the famous frame story of Shahrazad, a brilliant woman forced to marry a bloodthirsty king who kills his wife each night and marries a new one in the morning.
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