Arabian Nights And Days.

New York: Doubleday, 1995. Anyone with suspicions about the fairy tale tag "They lived happily ever after" will have them confirmed here. The latest translation of Mahfouz (winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature) is a clever, witty concoction that begins on the day following the Thousand and One Nights, when the vizier Dandan learns that his daughter, Shahrzad, has succeeded in saving her life by enthralling the sultan with wondrous tales. But Shahrzad is miserable and distrusts her husband, who, she suspects, is still capable of bloody doings. All is not well outside the palace either, where a medieval Islamic city teems with anxious souls. Many of them, like the devout Skeikh Abdullah al-Balkhi, strive to attain a high spiritual station, but few succeed, especially when genies and angels intervene, as they do often in this series of linked intrigues and adventures. Mahfouz succeeds splendidly with this fantasy, which should appeal to a wide readership. [Mahfouz is recovering from an October 14th knife attack by alleged Islamic militants.-Ed.]" -Library Journal