Marvellous Thieves

“In “Marvellous Thieves,” a nimble 2017 study of the “Arabian Nights” and its provenance, Paulo Lemos Horta notes that Diyab, prior to recounting “Aladdin” to Galland, had attended the royal court, in Versailles, with Lucas (who made him robe up in mock-Oriental garb), and admired the bejewelled splendor of the women—a Western detail that gleams in the Eastern princess of “Aladdin.” Thus do cultures feast upon one another.”

“Paulo Horta has uncovered a mass of fresh evidence about key figures in the making of the Arabian Nights and communicates his startling findings with a storyteller’s verve, raising many fascinating issues about the interplay of invention, imitation, translation, and plagiarism, and probing the vexed effects of the imperial gaze and the acquisition of local expertise and languages. In Marvellous Thieves, Paulo Horta has written a highly entertaining, attentive, and scholarly work of literary detection.”

“Marvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent and original work of literary scholarship.”

“L’approche de Paulo Lemos Horta est extrêmement originale.”

Paulo Lemos Horta’s approach is extremely original.

“This vivid, intellectually lively and revelatory book gives complex answers – and brilliant stories of literary sleuthing – to a couple of seemingly simple questions: who wrote Arabian Nights?”

“Horta reaches the astonishing conclusion that Diyab was not simply a passing storyteller to Galland’s master translator, but a “crucial contributor to the networks of creativity” that brought the Arabian Nights into European culture.”

“This work is a major contribution to the study of the complexities inherent in translating such a masterpiece.”

“This fine book … cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the “Arabian Nights,” serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories.”

“[Horta’s] fascinating search for the origins of The Arabian Nights as it exists today reveals a multitude of storytellers nearly as colorful as Sinbad or Aladdin.”

“An insightful examination of a significant literary work and the fraught complexities of translation.”

“… underhållande och väl underbyggda …”

… entertaining and well-founded …

“The translators Horta recounts were unquestionably thieves—of each other, of their sources and interlocutors, of their own personal encounters in Arab, Persian, and Indian cities they visited. But Horta makes a persuasive case that each man’s acts of plagiarism, theft, recreation, and simple fabrication are nearly as interesting stories as the ones they were toiling to bring to Western readers. Each man, whether Antoine Galland and Hanna Diyab or Richard Burton, was seeking to make his mark upon the world and preserve literature. There are numerous books recounting the problematic legacy of colonial translators, ethnographers, or simple civil servants like Torrens, but that book is not Marvellous Thieves and Horta has given readers a highly enjoyable account of the story behind the Thousand and One Nights.”

“Marvellous Thieves is an exciting reading experience that helps us reconstruct a biography of one of the oldest romances in literary history.”

“In writing a biography of 200 years of Nights' translation, with its multiplicity of voices, sources, contexts and prejudices, Horta has breathed life into another great story to emerge from the Thousand and One Nights.”

“Marvellous Thieves is a major contribution to the study of the Arabian Nights as it makes use of overlooked primary sources such as Diyab’s memoir.”