Here's the cover of the 1987 Viking (UK) hardback I have (282 pages).įor years I’d put off reading The Arabian Nightmare, waiting for the right time, as I’d been under the impression that it was a rather complex and laborious read. (Updated/1/25/17 with cover and interior illustrations) We all exist in the realm of tales – starting with our dreams and ending with our own lives. We are all here episodes in someone else’s story. Some men’s fates make small stories, others great stories, epics. Somewhere within the viscera of every man sits his fate, painful like a kidney stone. The protagonist arrives in Cairo, there he starts dreaming phantasmagoric dreams and then he turns into a character in the storyteller’s tale and soon the illusions become more real than reality…
…each dream carries within its womb another dream. Reality, dreams, tales: in what relations are they among themselves? The world is all made of one substance it will suffice to examine any portion of it thoroughly. He saw barely enough of life to fuel his dreams: a couple of hundred faces, the view from the Citadel, a handful of incidents, treasured and constantly reused in inner reflection. The Dawadar spent most of his days dozing on opium. The Arabian Nightmare is magic realism and postmodernism rolled into one exotically splendid daydream.
He is the author of six works of non-fiction: The Middle East in the Middle Ages (1984), The Arabian Nights: A Companion (1994), Islamic Art (1997), Night and Horses and the Desert: The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature (1999), Alhambra (2004), and For Lust of Knowing The Orientalists and Their Enemies (2006).
He has published six novels: The Arabian Nightmare (1983), The Limits of Vision (1986), The Mysteries of Algiers (1988), Exquisite Corpse (1995), Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (1997), and Satan Wants Me (1999). Robert Irwin goes rollerblading most days and takes part in rollerblading marathons.His other pursuits include juggling, pinball and cooking. He is the commissioning editor for the TLS for The Middle East and writes for a number of newspapers and journals in the UK and the USA. He also lectured on Arabic and Middle Eastern History at the universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford. He read Modern History at Oxford and taught Medieval History at the University of St Andrews.
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