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1001 Nights (or Arabian Nights) is a collection of stories gathered over many years by Middle Eastern scholars. The stories themselves are less famous than the framing tale in which they were placed: Shahryar, a mad sultan, begins taking girls into his harem, spending one night with them, and then having them executed in the morning. Scheherazade is a brave woman who agrees to stay with the sultan. But that first night she begins telling him a story…fascinated by her endless collection of tales, the sultan keeps her alive so he can hear more.

Jeon Jin-seok sets his manhwa of the same title in the same place, and with the same sultan. In the Middle East, sometime during or just after the Crusades, and unnamed country is ruled by the young sultan Shahryar. After a nasty experience with an unfaithful wife, Sharyar creates a rigid schedule: Every night he has a lovely young virgin brought to his palace; he sleeps with her and, in the morning, has her beheaded. Even crueler, the women are made well aware of their fate beforehand.

Dunrya, a pretty young woman, and her equally pretty brother Sehara live in the capital city. Sehara is a scholar with an interest in Asian literature, brought to him by Arabic merchants via the Silk Road. As word of the Sultan’s new practice spreads, the siblings are understandably worried. Dunrya, whose love for her brother seems to reach well beyond the sisterly, begs Sehara to marry her (a practice allowed in this culture), while Sehara plots to leave town. But before they can take off, the Sultan’s men come for Dunrya. Sehara dutifully puts on a veil and goes in her place.

In a typical story, this situation would lead to a cross-dressing comedy of errors. But 1001 Nights takes a different, more realistic approach- Shahryar discovers Sehara’s deception almost immediately and orders his execution. But Sehara persuades him to put off his death until the morning, while he tells the sultan an exotic (and pointed) story.

This first night Sehara tells the tale of Turandot (probably familiar to most readers by way of Pucchini’s opera). Turandot is a Mandarin princess famed for her beauty and coldness. If any man wishes to marry her he must first answer three riddles. If he gets any of them wrong, he is executed. When an exiled Prince of Persia wanders into the kingdom, he takes Turandot up on her challenge, and wins. Rather than being angry at Sehara’s insolence, Shahryar is impressed with his storytelling and appoints him the new royal bard.

But even this doesn’t necessarily save Dunrya. Shahryar still has her rounded up, but on the way to the palace she is kidnapped by rebels intent on stopping the sultan’s barbarism. It turns out the rebel leader is an old friend of the siblings. When Shahryar goes after the rebels, he takes Sehara along to care for his sister. But Shahryar is captured by the rebels, and Sehara finds his loyalties are curiously divided. His story in this second volume is the tragic Korean folktale about the son of the sea god and his beloved wife, who is unfaithful to him.

Shahryar eventually gets back to the palace, accompanied by Sehara and Dunrya. A well-timed story about the love triangle between Cleopatra, Ptolemy and Julius Caesar saves Dunrya from the sultan’s hungry gaze.

By volume four Sehara has become convinced that a cheating wife can’t be enough to drive a man to madness and serial murder. An opportune conversation with Shahryar’s brother turns up a much deeper, more grievous wound in the sultan’s past. Determined to heal Shahryar’s wounded psyche, Sehara regales him with the sad story of the angel and the woodsman (one of those universal myths; in China the angel is a bird woman; in Ireland, a selkie).

Sehara has to wait nearly until the end of volume five to tell his next tale, a historical story of ancient Greece, about the philosopher Socrates and his love affair with Alcibiades. Humor ensues when Shahryar drastically mistakes the moral of this story! The first three-quarters of this volume are devoted to the story of a good deed. One a day trip to the ocean, Shahryar disguises himself as a commoner and takes Sehara along for the ride. They run into a teenage girl and her tutor, who are eloping against her parents’ will. Their flight is a direct result of Shahryar’s atrocities, so Sehara and Shahryar help them escape her parents. This plotline takes up so much of the volume that the Socrates and Alcibiades are left hanging until the next installment.

1001 Nights runs on two tracks: one is the current, ‘real’ story of Shahryar and Sehara; the other is the stream of tales Sehara provides. Both tracks are equally interesting. Sehara’s stories are all retellings of myths, folktales, or well-known historical incidents, and thus far all have ended tragically, a fact Shahryar complains about. The depressing nature of Sehara’s stories is partially explained in the extensive author’s notes at the end of volume one.

All the volumes have comments from the Seon and the artist, Han Seung-he, as well as short previews of other Yen Press titles. Usually the notes explain why Seon chose a particular story for Sehara, and includes insight into related mythology or the manhwa’s Middle Eastern setting. This keeps the author’s notes from becoming tedious or self-centered. There are short footnotes throughout the manhwa as well, clarifying aspects of 13^th-century Middle Eastern culture. They are useful, though for some reason the translators felt the need to define the term ‘emir’ for us in every single volume.

The characters are refreshingly complex, their motivations not always clear even to themselves. Dunrya’s passionate love for her brother and Sehara’s obsession with foreign cultures are clearly drawn. Shahryar is the star of the psychological show, however, and it’s easy to see how Sehara can become so fascinated by him. He’s a serial rapist who has had dozens of innocent women executed, yet he also exudes childish delight when he thinks he’s outwitted Sehara. He’s capricious, cruel, charming, dangerous and badly damaged. He’s the sort of person we hate in real life but love in fiction. His love-hate relationship with Sehara is the burning core of the story.

Readers looking for man-on-man action based on the premise will be disappointed. But as their friendship deepens, Shahryar starts giving Sehara thoughtful looks, and in volume five they have to pretend to be lovers to help the eloping couple escape.

The art of 1001 Nights is beautiful, with lots of shading, bold lines and intricate detail. The women are elegant, the men pretty without being overly feminine. Yen Press took over the series after the original publisher, Ice Kunion, went under. Yen has preserved the original, larger size, left-to-right format and lovely cover art. And at $10.95, it’s not much more expensive than smaller formats.

1001 Nights is one of those overlooked gems that alert readers will sometimes stumble across. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants the complete deal: great story, gorgeous art, and complex, sympathetic characters.

Details

Publisher: Yen Press
Author: Seon Jin-seok
Pages: 180 x 5 volumes
Format: manhwa
MSRP: $10.95
Date of Publication: 12/08/05- current
Buy: Buy it!