liadnan

Right, that's enough, I'm off to drink. I may be some time...

Currently reading (well re-reading after several years) a very good book by a Turkish-American woman called Guneli Gun (there should be things slightly like umlauts, but not, over the 'u's there). Called On the Road to Baghdad it's a re-telling of the Arabian Nights in a modern style and from a feminist perspective. There's quite a lot of humour too.

Our heroine starts off in Istanbul in the reign of Selim the Grim, ricochets around time via Baghdad in the reign of Haroun al Rashid and then winds back in her own time telling Sheherazade the stories which she then re-interprets into the tales as we know them. Then there's Sheherazade's own story, rather different from the frame story of the Nights.

Although feminism is a major theme, it's largely 'about' telling stories and re-presenting them. Unsurprisingly, lots of post-modernism, but it avoids the common problem of such works and doesn't disappear up its own arse. It's also about sufism, which is something about which I know very little other than what I read in this book, though it has often fascinated me.

Buy, if you can find it, though I doubt it's still in print.

Anyway, yes, drinking. Traaa.