I read Arabian Nights in my adolescence in Lebanon. Those stories awakened my eroticism and fantasy – they were about desire and love, full of colour, fragrances, texture and sounds, and I never forget that in my writing.
This is a completely original version of the Arabian Nights Stories by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean. In order to delay her inevitable execution, Queen Shaharazad tells her murdering husband, King Shahryar, a wonderfully exciting story every night. The King is used to a new wife every day, only to put her to death the following day, but finds himself so intrigued in the magical stories Shaharazad tells, he can't bring himself to kill her. Night after night she tells her wonderful stories until the King starts to realize that he won't be able to live without them...
Geraldine McCaughrean (born 1951) trained as a teacher but learned only that she was useless at teaching. So she worked instead as a sub at a partwork magazine company, perfect training in cutting to length, abandoning pretentions and writing blurbs. A Carnegie Medallist, three-time winner of the Whitbread and the very first recipient of the Blue Peter Book Award, she has written almost 150 books and plays. In 2006 she was blessed with the chance to write the official sequel to J M Barrie’s Peter Pan at the behest of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Peter Pan in Scarlet has been translated into 38 other languages.
