Whatever Gets You through the Night

Download or read book Whatever Gets You through the Night written by Andrei Codrescu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights "I fear each passing night that I will not receive my maintenance dose of suspense, and then I will cease to exist."—Whatever Gets You through the Night Whatever Gets You through the Night is an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights and a wildly inspired exploration of the timeless art of storytelling. Award-winning writer Andrei Codrescu reimagines how Sheherezade saved Baghdad's virgins and her own life through a heroic feat of storytelling—one that kept the Persian king Sharyar hanging in agonizing narrative and erotic suspense for 1001 nights. For Sheherezade, the end of either suspense or curiosity means death, but Codrescu keeps both alive in this entertaining tale of how she learned to hold a king in thrall, setting with her endless invention an unsurpassable example for all storytellers across the ages. Liberated and mischievous, Codrescu's Sheherezade is as charming as she is shrewd—and so is the story Codrescu tells.