Secrets of the Arabian Nights

The Arabian Nights first arrived in the West 300 years ago, and ever since then its stories have entranced generations of children and seduced adults with a vision of an exotic, magical Middle East. Actor and director Richard E. Grant wants to know why the book he loved as a child still has such a hold on our imagination. He travels to Paris to discover how the stories of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin were first brought to the West by the pioneering Arabist Antoine Galland in the early 18th century. And then he travels to Cairo to explore the medieval Islamic world which first created them. He quickly finds that some of the stories can still be deeply controversial, because of their sexually-explicit content.

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Books and Films - Arabian Nights