The Book of Travels
Afterword: “Ḥannā Diyāb and the Thousand and One Nights”
Ḥannā Diyāb · Edited by Johannes Stephan · Translated by Elias Muhanna · Preface by Yasmine Seale · Afterword by Paulo Lemos Horta · Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2021
Horta brought this project to Philip Kennedy, director of the Library of Arabic Literature, recruited Johannes Stephan and Elias Muhanna as editor and translator, and wrote the afterword on “Hanna Diyab and the Thousand and One Nights.”
Horta’s Afterword reads the memoir alongside the tales Diyab gave Antoine Galland and argues that “the so-called orphan tales … can no longer be seen as authorless.” Rather, he makes the case that perhaps they should be known as the “Diyāb tales.” In the paperback edition the Afterword runs pp. 318–338.