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The Arabian Nightmare
'A masterpiece of historical fantasy and fetid imagination.' -Time Out Highly acclaimed cult novelist, historian and literary critic.
242 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Robert Irwin
104 books124 followersRobert Graham Irwin is a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
August 5, 2020
The Arabian Nightmare is magic realism and postmodernism rolled into one exotically splendid daydream.
Reality, dreams, tales: in what relations are they among themselves?
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…
We all exist in the realm of tales – starting with our dreams and ending with our own lives.
The Dawadar spent most of his days dozing on opium. 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 world is all made of one substance; it will suffice to examine any portion of it thoroughly.
Reality, dreams, tales: in what relations are they among themselves?
…each dream carries within its womb another dream. It is the interior image of infinity.
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…
Somewhere within the viscera of every man sits his fate, painful like a kidney stone. It is kismet. It is a story which is writing man. Some men’s fates make small stories, others great stories, epics. The big stories eat the small stories. We are all here episodes in someone else’s story.
We all exist in the realm of tales – starting with our dreams and ending with our own lives.
March 6, 2023
(Updated/1/25/17 with cover and interior illustrations)
Here's the cover of the 1987 Viking (UK) hardback I have (282 pages).
For 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. This wasn’t the case at all. To my surprise, it was actually a page-turner for me, despite the dream-like (or nightmare-like) nature of the novel, with simple-yet-elegant, engaging prose and near-perfect pacing.
Yes, it can be a bit convoluted at times, which is to be expected considering it deals with the dreams within dreams of the main character, Balian -- an English spy stuck in medieval Cairo’s endless labyrinthine streets, never certain whether he's awake or sleeping -- and there were moments when I, like Balian, wasn’t sure what was happening, or what was real and what wasn't (as the author most assuredly intended). But I was soon sucked further and further into the twisted dream logic, and left no choice but to continue. Unlike some "dream" novels and stories, the stakes here felt very real and immediate, and I cared about the fate of Balian.
The atmosphere put me in much the same mood as Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life, in that it produces a similar sensation of being trapped in unreality. Also, various "teachers"/"knowledge-bearers" will sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere to tell stories (within stories within stories...) or provide Balian with enigmatic clues -- both to immediate plot-related concerns, and to more existential ones -- while at the same time deepening the mystery of his strange "dreaming" affliction and the web of conspiracies that surround him.
It can be terrifying at times, hilarious at others, yet always very thought-provoking, and the Russian nesting doll-style structure -- in the tradition of the original Arabian Nights -- is just plain fun. It’s without a doubt one of the most absorbing books I’ve read in years. "Transportive" might be a better descriptor. Either way, anyone with a taste for reality-bending strange tales should be more than satisfied by The Arabian Nightmare.
I for one can't wait to read it again, as I imagine it will be a much different experience the second time around.
5 Stars
PS: The many life-like illustrations of Cairo by 19th century artist David Roberts are excellent, and were quite helpful in allowing me to fully envision the environs. Unlike the examples below, the images in the book are black and white, unfortunately. I tried to take pictures but they turned out like hot garbage.
Here's the cover of the 1987 Viking (UK) hardback I have (282 pages).
For 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. This wasn’t the case at all. To my surprise, it was actually a page-turner for me, despite the dream-like (or nightmare-like) nature of the novel, with simple-yet-elegant, engaging prose and near-perfect pacing.
Yes, it can be a bit convoluted at times, which is to be expected considering it deals with the dreams within dreams of the main character, Balian -- an English spy stuck in medieval Cairo’s endless labyrinthine streets, never certain whether he's awake or sleeping -- and there were moments when I, like Balian, wasn’t sure what was happening, or what was real and what wasn't (as the author most assuredly intended). But I was soon sucked further and further into the twisted dream logic, and left no choice but to continue. Unlike some "dream" novels and stories, the stakes here felt very real and immediate, and I cared about the fate of Balian.
The atmosphere put me in much the same mood as Linklater’s 2001 film Waking Life, in that it produces a similar sensation of being trapped in unreality. Also, various "teachers"/"knowledge-bearers" will sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere to tell stories (within stories within stories...) or provide Balian with enigmatic clues -- both to immediate plot-related concerns, and to more existential ones -- while at the same time deepening the mystery of his strange "dreaming" affliction and the web of conspiracies that surround him.
It can be terrifying at times, hilarious at others, yet always very thought-provoking, and the Russian nesting doll-style structure -- in the tradition of the original Arabian Nights -- is just plain fun. It’s without a doubt one of the most absorbing books I’ve read in years. "Transportive" might be a better descriptor. Either way, anyone with a taste for reality-bending strange tales should be more than satisfied by The Arabian Nightmare.
I for one can't wait to read it again, as I imagine it will be a much different experience the second time around.
5 Stars
PS: The many life-like illustrations of Cairo by 19th century artist David Roberts are excellent, and were quite helpful in allowing me to fully envision the environs. Unlike the examples below, the images in the book are black and white, unfortunately. I tried to take pictures but they turned out like hot garbage.
March 17, 2024
You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase, you will enter a still deeper layer, open and relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Cairo. I say: ONE As you focus your attention entirely on my tale, you will slowly begin to relax. TWO As you consider your role in this tale, your identity as a spy, your body and your mind become warmer, sleepier. THREE The sleepiness becomes a dreaminess. The dreaminess becomes a dream. The dream becomes a story. The story becomes many stories. Are you in these stories? Are you the protagonist? Who is the storyteller? FOUR Who are the characters in this story? Are they spies like you? Are they friends and lovers, are they enemies and conspirators? Their identities are beginning to blur. My stories are beginning to blur. FIVE The blurriness is spreading to the whole of your body, your memories, your reality. What is the waking world and what is the dreaming world? What is this place called Cairo? What is there? On the count of six, I want you to go deeper. I say: SIX You are bleeding now, from your face, from your mind. This is the sleeping sickness, the Arabian Nightmare. Your body is beginning to sink. SEVEN You go deeper and deeper and deeper, you sink into this dream within dreams. Are you lost in this story? EIGHT I am the storyteller and I am dead. Who is telling this story? Perhaps you are now the storyteller. Who are these characters around you? Perhaps they are projections of your own self, splintered and separated. What is this sick dreaming, this dreaming sickness? Perhaps the dream is your reality. With every breath you take, you go deeper into this dream reality, into your sickness. NINE You are dreaming you are awake. You are bleeding your self. You go deeper into these stories, into the Arabian Nightmare. On the mental count of ten, you will be in Cairo. Be there at ten. I say: TEN
December 11, 2008
so i started reading this on the subway sitting next to a man who was (somehow) simultaneously reading and humming. who does that?? so by the time i got to work i realized i hadnt absorbed anything because i was so distracted by hummy. so i started over. and it made more sense this time, but it was tainted by having to be restarted. and then life intervened and i put it down for a few days and lost the plot(s) - not a great idea. this review is a mess. bottom line - its my own damn fault i didnt like this more than i did. its very intricate and requires more sustained involvement than i could give it. so i apologize to you, book. you can stay on table...
March 4, 2021
-Adelantadísima a su tiempo.-
Género. Narrativa fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro La pesadilla arábiga (publicación original: The Arabian Nightmare, 1983) nos presenta a Balian de Norwich, un joven caballero inglés que llega a El Cairo de finales del siglo XV como peregrino pero con la intención de espiar para la corte francesa y valorar las fuerzas militares de los mamelucos. Pronto muestra unas hemorragias preocupantes, acompañadas de una alteración del sueño que confunde su realidad con lo onírico y que llevan a Balian a relacionarse con personas tan peculiares como extrañas por diferentes zonas de la ciudad sin que sus verdaderas intenciones queden claras.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Narrativa fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. El libro La pesadilla arábiga (publicación original: The Arabian Nightmare, 1983) nos presenta a Balian de Norwich, un joven caballero inglés que llega a El Cairo de finales del siglo XV como peregrino pero con la intención de espiar para la corte francesa y valorar las fuerzas militares de los mamelucos. Pronto muestra unas hemorragias preocupantes, acompañadas de una alteración del sueño que confunde su realidad con lo onírico y que llevan a Balian a relacionarse con personas tan peculiares como extrañas por diferentes zonas de la ciudad sin que sus verdaderas intenciones queden claras.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
August 1, 2019
Every visitor finds it difficult to leave Cairo. It unfolds itself like a story that will never end.The line between dreaming and waking life dissolves in this elegant riff on One Thousand and One Nights. Set in Cairo amid institutions such as the House of Sleep and the Invisible College of Sleep Teachers, and filled with djinns, talking apes, leprous knights, and magicians of questionable repute, it is one of the most compelling novels I've read that traverses the borderlands of the dreamworld. Seemingly trapped within Cairo's maze of streets and alleys, the Englishman Balian falls into a perpetual somnabulistic state, becoming just another character in an ever-expanding kaleidoscope of tales spun by an erratic, unreliable narrator. Upon waking up that first time with blood filling his throat, was it really such a good idea for Balian to enlist the help of the sketchy alchemist Vane and his mentor the Father of Cats? Maybe not, but his options for assistance are questionable to say the least. Unfortunately for Balian there will be many more bloody awakenings and just as many journeys through Cairo's underworld. And for every journey there is a story, each one of which inches the reader closer to the finale.
January 10, 2008
A specimen of narrative trickery like Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler; but mixing the obfuscation with ghoulish horror brings this more along the lines of Potocki’s. The Mauscript Found in Saragossa (which is referenced in the book, or Machen’s Three Imposters. Set in a 15th century Cairo that is turned into a oneiric labryinth, when a young Christian traveler (and spie) falls down the rabbit hole of the titular event (or not ). Endlessly switching narratives and states of reality keeps the reader wrapped in a web of possibilities and conclusions. A world of leper knights, automatons, storytellers, talking apes, murderous somanabulists, djinns, eidolons, dervishes, and other oddities and horrors(Fatima the deathly); ruled over by the sinister Father of the Cats, ruler of the house of sleep (or once again not). Delivered with deadpan humor and filled with a wealth of allusion to folklore, the occult, theology, and medieval history, this book is a lot of weird fun.
February 5, 2013
A tall-tale in the telling that manages to be playful, inventive, and lingeringly creepy, in no small part due to a combination of the exotic setting—a Cairo drowsing under medieval Muslim rule as related by an insomniac and peripatetic Christian narrator, with the decanted desert dust and labyrinthine city warrens a mixing bowl for the esoteric, philosophic, erotic, and phantasmagoric—and the vivid occult and matryoshkal imagination of the author. With the simultaneously roguish and sinister Father of Cats serving as the fantastic ringmaster of this story-tiered circus, all of the forbidden allure of the Oriental for the itinerant Westerner is put through its paces, the result being a puzzle-box of escapades that loop and weave through sluggish time and confounding dream fugues. Fully satisfying, if not always fully understandable or explainable; but presumably the first named must be the primary impetus for reading fiction in the first place, no?
June 22, 2015
One of the few books that I was simply unable to finish. I really tried to read and hopefully enjoy it, but it became a nightmare for me. I just couldn't get to a point where I even cared about Balian. I read almost half of the book, hoping something would hook me and keep me interested in the story, but it was as if I were slogging through a literary sand storm, unable to make headway and possibly endangering my life. So I gave up and returned to the reading oasis.
April 26, 2013
Plot: I can’t really summarise the plot because of how many stories run into each other and involve the same characters this makes any summary a little bit pointless. However a really short introduction to the narrative is that a traveler arrives in Cairo only to be taken in by this unknowable force which is a cross between lucid dreaming and drug fueled fantasies known as The Arabian Nightmare.
Structure: Dreamlike, story within a story.
What I liked: The structure the vivid language and the engaging narration.
What I didn't like: Because of the nature of the stories it was sometimes hard to keep up with whether we’d met a character before and also just keeping up with which character was who. This just made it a little bit of a difficult read even if your reading it all at once as I did.
Favourite Quote: ‘Do you see the city below us? Do you seeit? In the evenings dimness does it not seem to you like a child’s toy or a gaming board and the people thronging its streets like tiny dolls or even insects? Up here do not their struggles and their ideals and their passions seem ridiculous?’
Main Body of the Review:
First off I will say the most exciting thing about this book is the structure which is partly based on 1001 nights or Arabian nights. This means every story and chapter runs into each other. The structure is a dream within a dream, a story within an allegory within another story. This means that is hard to tell what is fantasy and reality in this novel. It starts very dreamlike and although events are odd they aren't horrible. Slowly however the characters and you as the reader begin to get trapped in a maze of overlapping narratives and the story becomes more of a nightmare.
This is quite a surreal read and so at times logic and reasoning do not apply this can be quite challenging but i feel like if you just let yourself be carried away by the surrealness, if you just go with it sort of begins to take on its own form of logic. One chapter of this book is genuinely called ‘The conclusion of the continuation of the interludes conclusion’, which might give you the tone of the novel. I some ways I would liken it to ‘If on a Winters Night a Traveler’ by Italo Calvino so if you enjoyed that book I would recommend this to you.
I can’t really say it was entirely an enjoyable read but it was a very rewarding one, and I also I couldn't put the book down. After I had finished this novel I not only felt like a more accomplished reader but also the writer side of me felt really inspired in terms of what a surreal and dreamlike narrative can achieve.
The Rating: Because I wouldn't exactly categorise this as the most enjoyable for me I find it quite hard to rate the book but the story/writing style has really stayed with me and it is incredibly well written so I am going to give it a 4/5.
Structure: Dreamlike, story within a story.
What I liked: The structure the vivid language and the engaging narration.
What I didn't like: Because of the nature of the stories it was sometimes hard to keep up with whether we’d met a character before and also just keeping up with which character was who. This just made it a little bit of a difficult read even if your reading it all at once as I did.
Favourite Quote: ‘Do you see the city below us? Do you seeit? In the evenings dimness does it not seem to you like a child’s toy or a gaming board and the people thronging its streets like tiny dolls or even insects? Up here do not their struggles and their ideals and their passions seem ridiculous?’
Main Body of the Review:
First off I will say the most exciting thing about this book is the structure which is partly based on 1001 nights or Arabian nights. This means every story and chapter runs into each other. The structure is a dream within a dream, a story within an allegory within another story. This means that is hard to tell what is fantasy and reality in this novel. It starts very dreamlike and although events are odd they aren't horrible. Slowly however the characters and you as the reader begin to get trapped in a maze of overlapping narratives and the story becomes more of a nightmare.
This is quite a surreal read and so at times logic and reasoning do not apply this can be quite challenging but i feel like if you just let yourself be carried away by the surrealness, if you just go with it sort of begins to take on its own form of logic. One chapter of this book is genuinely called ‘The conclusion of the continuation of the interludes conclusion’, which might give you the tone of the novel. I some ways I would liken it to ‘If on a Winters Night a Traveler’ by Italo Calvino so if you enjoyed that book I would recommend this to you.
I can’t really say it was entirely an enjoyable read but it was a very rewarding one, and I also I couldn't put the book down. After I had finished this novel I not only felt like a more accomplished reader but also the writer side of me felt really inspired in terms of what a surreal and dreamlike narrative can achieve.
The Rating: Because I wouldn't exactly categorise this as the most enjoyable for me I find it quite hard to rate the book but the story/writing style has really stayed with me and it is incredibly well written so I am going to give it a 4/5.
December 18, 2018
Oh boy, this one is outstanding beyond words; never-ending sequence of dreams and nightmares interwoven with amazing sights of medieval Egypt and then with even more dreams and visions.
Magic realism at its finest.
Magic realism at its finest.
October 12, 2019
Not my usual cup of tea, but it's quite the collection of outrageous inventions:
And I totally agree with this:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1001...
Melsemuth was an automaton, a seven-foot-high brass doll powered with springs and coils. The condemned would be strapped to the doll, leg to leg, chest to chest, arm to arm. Then the doll, wound up, would begin its funny clockwork dance. The gestures and kicks would get wilder and wilder. Finally as the coils were running down, Melsemuth would garotte its dancing partner and stop.
And I totally agree with this:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1001...
September 2, 2014
I'd been meaning to read this for a long time. When I first began to read some stranger fiction - the first time I discovered the Dedalus imprint, I think - I saw The Arabian Nightmare recommended highly. It's one of those books which has attained cult status - and pretty reasonably, too, given that it's part sex manual, part spy story, part meditation on dreams and part talking-animal tale, all wrapped in the patterned carpets of Orientalism and stuffed inside a shaggy dog.
I suspect it's one of those books which, by dint of the enormously evocative descriptions and obviously well-researched background - Irwin is a scholar and Cairo is certainly in his bailiwick - dazzles readers and seems, like the rope trick, to be something more than it is.
It is enjoyable. I can't deny that. The beginning of the work creates atmosphere as quickly as anything I've read. But it doesn't maintain interest as well as the narrative seems to think it does. Storytelling and the unreliability of narration - as well as the structure of the work echoing the loss of stability felt by the lead characters - is a big element. It's just unfortunate the action seems less of a concern than the setting.
Library Journal suggested "the novel's intricacy is likely to put off the general reader" but I don't think the general reader is the only one put off by a narrative that doesn't know what to do with itself. I've read plenty of odd-structured fiction, so I'm OK with experimentation. But here, unlike the studied confusion of Potocki's The Manuscript Found In Saragossa - a book Irwin modelled this work on - there's not really a feeling of unification.
The amount of reviews calling Irwin's text a mind-boggler or somehow otherwise transcendental are a bit off the mark. Yes, it is an unusual book. Yes, it does capture a setting, a point in time particularly well. Yes, it does the Eco/Calvino shaggy-dog thing. But other books do this better. Irwin's research is excellent, his writing isn't full of the gimlet-eyed mysticism which haunts some other psychogeographical writers - but the book is ultimately less satisfying than, say, Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars. This book aims to be a puzzle box, and it is puzzling though perhaps not in the way the author intended.
An excellent addition to the text are the illustrations of 'the Scottish Canaletto', David Roberts. They're excellently evocative, and provide a real sense of location for the narrative, albeit an Orientalist take.
The Arabian Nightmare is a story of searching, and a search for a story. I can't help but like it, though - the audacity of its ramshackle construction is appealing, if not completely understandable.
I suspect it's one of those books which, by dint of the enormously evocative descriptions and obviously well-researched background - Irwin is a scholar and Cairo is certainly in his bailiwick - dazzles readers and seems, like the rope trick, to be something more than it is.
It is enjoyable. I can't deny that. The beginning of the work creates atmosphere as quickly as anything I've read. But it doesn't maintain interest as well as the narrative seems to think it does. Storytelling and the unreliability of narration - as well as the structure of the work echoing the loss of stability felt by the lead characters - is a big element. It's just unfortunate the action seems less of a concern than the setting.
Library Journal suggested "the novel's intricacy is likely to put off the general reader" but I don't think the general reader is the only one put off by a narrative that doesn't know what to do with itself. I've read plenty of odd-structured fiction, so I'm OK with experimentation. But here, unlike the studied confusion of Potocki's The Manuscript Found In Saragossa - a book Irwin modelled this work on - there's not really a feeling of unification.
The amount of reviews calling Irwin's text a mind-boggler or somehow otherwise transcendental are a bit off the mark. Yes, it is an unusual book. Yes, it does capture a setting, a point in time particularly well. Yes, it does the Eco/Calvino shaggy-dog thing. But other books do this better. Irwin's research is excellent, his writing isn't full of the gimlet-eyed mysticism which haunts some other psychogeographical writers - but the book is ultimately less satisfying than, say, Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars. This book aims to be a puzzle box, and it is puzzling though perhaps not in the way the author intended.
An excellent addition to the text are the illustrations of 'the Scottish Canaletto', David Roberts. They're excellently evocative, and provide a real sense of location for the narrative, albeit an Orientalist take.
The Arabian Nightmare is a story of searching, and a search for a story. I can't help but like it, though - the audacity of its ramshackle construction is appealing, if not completely understandable.
January 17, 2020
Although Robert Irwin knows HOW to write, he doesn't have a clue about WHAT to write. Apparently inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, he has made a messy, pointless, ultimately boring mishmash of a book set in Cairo hundreds of years ago.
The illustrations are quite lovely, made in the nineteenth century.
Hmph
The illustrations are quite lovely, made in the nineteenth century.
Hmph
June 10, 2013
I’ve read a lot of books which have tried a similarly ‘postmodern’ approach – a historical backdrop, dreams versus reality, narrators inside & out – but none half as good as this.
It’s all in the House of Sleep: wet dreams, talking apes, phantom, serial-killing daughter-whores, & yes, a fervid & terrifying Orientalism based in & around the Arabian Nights.
It also makes good use of one of my favourite literary effects: the fusion of terror & humour. Read it and weep… while half-asleep. And wonder whether you dreamed it all.
It’s all in the House of Sleep: wet dreams, talking apes, phantom, serial-killing daughter-whores, & yes, a fervid & terrifying Orientalism based in & around the Arabian Nights.
It also makes good use of one of my favourite literary effects: the fusion of terror & humour. Read it and weep… while half-asleep. And wonder whether you dreamed it all.
May 27, 2008
I enjoyed this book a lot, although it took two attempts to finish it. It's an insightful book about a sleep disorder called The Arabian Nightmare. It uses The Arabian Nights convention of story-telling, except that rather have a story-within-a-story, it has stories-within-dreams which are contained in other dreams. I think that the premise was better than what the book actually delivered, but it's entertaining and very exotic.
August 26, 2013
wow just wow. I'm rendered speechless after finishing this book.
February 14, 2018
Set in the era of 1406, Cairo Egypt, it is an intriguing time to be in the Middle East. European powers are watching events closely much like they do today and they are sending spies and emissaries to gather information. You also have your share of traveling merchants and religious pilgrims. Balian, from England is one such individual. Under the guise of being a pilgrim, he goes to Cairo in hope of taking a pilgrimage to Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert. Gathering information and making travel plans in the Middle East has always been a challenge and it is no different in 1406. Between having to get a visa from the dawadar and getting struck by the Arabian nightmare our Balian finds it hard to move about and out of Cairo.
The Arabian Nightmare is a devastating illness of whose exact nature is not known. At night the person suffers from horrifying nightmare and the individual wakes up covered in blood, from a bloody nose of course. Eventually in a daze Balian leaves his caravanserai and wanders aimlessly in the streets of Cairo being unable to determine if he is awake or dreaming. In his dreams he is visited by Suleyka, a courtesan of sorts. He also meets Yoll the story teller and is pursued either in his sleep or in reality by The Father of Cats and his assistant Vane.
In the backdrop of al this is tons of political intrigue. The Ottomans and the Mamelukes are questing against each other for dominion in the Middle East. Foreign merchants are arrested and thrown in prison based on charges sometimes evolved from hear say. No one wants the Arabian Nightmare to spread so soon begins a hunt for Balian.
The Father of Cats owns a school for sleep and he is in cahoots with a Christians to bring about Armageddon. Over all good story and the writing was entertaining. I read the book easily in three days as much as it was loaded with intrigue it also had mentions of Arab philosophers and several jinn characters. There is a talking ape who appears in more than one section of the book and sometimes it is hard to tell if there were more apes.
The story was hard to follow at times as the author gets the reader lost in an endless description or a side story. I had to reread several passages. When Balian is traversing through Cairo it is hard to tell if he is dreaming or awake. I like to know what is what when I read my books. If you like Middle Eastern stories than this one is for you in typical fashion
The Arabian Nightmare is a devastating illness of whose exact nature is not known. At night the person suffers from horrifying nightmare and the individual wakes up covered in blood, from a bloody nose of course. Eventually in a daze Balian leaves his caravanserai and wanders aimlessly in the streets of Cairo being unable to determine if he is awake or dreaming. In his dreams he is visited by Suleyka, a courtesan of sorts. He also meets Yoll the story teller and is pursued either in his sleep or in reality by The Father of Cats and his assistant Vane.
In the backdrop of al this is tons of political intrigue. The Ottomans and the Mamelukes are questing against each other for dominion in the Middle East. Foreign merchants are arrested and thrown in prison based on charges sometimes evolved from hear say. No one wants the Arabian Nightmare to spread so soon begins a hunt for Balian.
The Father of Cats owns a school for sleep and he is in cahoots with a Christians to bring about Armageddon. Over all good story and the writing was entertaining. I read the book easily in three days as much as it was loaded with intrigue it also had mentions of Arab philosophers and several jinn characters. There is a talking ape who appears in more than one section of the book and sometimes it is hard to tell if there were more apes.
The story was hard to follow at times as the author gets the reader lost in an endless description or a side story. I had to reread several passages. When Balian is traversing through Cairo it is hard to tell if he is dreaming or awake. I like to know what is what when I read my books. If you like Middle Eastern stories than this one is for you in typical fashion
December 7, 2021
This book has so many things I love, existential dread, explorations of dream worlds, occult lore, obscure history, stories within stories, humour edging into madness. It's one of the few genuinely disturbing books I own, it doesn't stay on the page - it aims to creep out and infect you with it's titular madness. And for that reason it's not for everyone, I know of a couple of friends who found it too disturbing to enjoy. Definately one for fans of the weird and macabre.
He's such a great writer. I don't know anyone who can mix humour eroticism, terror , madness and erudite learning in the way he does. If you do, please let me know about them!
The central idea - that you can be inflicted with a disease in which you have dreams of infinite suffering ,but don't rember them in the morning, is just genius, and characteristic of his delicious black humour. I thought of this book after suffering from insomnia and sleep paralysis the other night, and realised it was also pretty damn profound. Part of me fears that indeed I did contract the Nightmare when I first read this many moons ago, but of course.. one can never know...
One of my very favourite books, tied with his other novel Satan Wants Me.
He's such a great writer. I don't know anyone who can mix humour eroticism, terror , madness and erudite learning in the way he does. If you do, please let me know about them!
The central idea - that you can be inflicted with a disease in which you have dreams of infinite suffering ,but don't rember them in the morning, is just genius, and characteristic of his delicious black humour. I thought of this book after suffering from insomnia and sleep paralysis the other night, and realised it was also pretty damn profound. Part of me fears that indeed I did contract the Nightmare when I first read this many moons ago, but of course.. one can never know...
One of my very favourite books, tied with his other novel Satan Wants Me.
April 30, 2008
"His life was being eaten away by monstrous boredom. He came for me in search of help. With the right kind of medidicines, I think I can save him with nightmares".
October 21, 2018
the plot was exciting, yet the second half of the book became too boring especially in a long line of confusing storytellings. could hardly make it till the end.
May 9, 2023
This one is going to need a reread at some point, because I think I may have missed a point somewhere along the line.
Set, I think, just before the Crusades, an Englishman explores Cairo, rapidly becoming lost within his own mind as he stops being able to distinguish reality from his ever more disturbing dreams... as do we, the readers (though that is, of course, the point).
Irwin's prose is lush, usually knowingly humorous, but more than capable of descents into the darkest depths of human nature. There's little obvious in the way of plot as we follow the protagonist up and down the strata of his consciousness, as well as the intricately layered stories related to him by various folk who may or may not be figments of his dreams.
TAN gets compared to both The Arabian Nights (of course), and The Name of the Rose (more of a stretch here for me, unless it's the similar time setting... though I suppose Symbolism is a shared feature); but it also reminded me rather strongly of Gene Wolfe's The New Sun trilogy, with Cairo coming over just as rotten and ancient as Nessus, and just as filled with wonder and strangely suggestive incomprehensibility.
A fascinating read, but not your standard one.
Set, I think, just before the Crusades, an Englishman explores Cairo, rapidly becoming lost within his own mind as he stops being able to distinguish reality from his ever more disturbing dreams... as do we, the readers (though that is, of course, the point).
Irwin's prose is lush, usually knowingly humorous, but more than capable of descents into the darkest depths of human nature. There's little obvious in the way of plot as we follow the protagonist up and down the strata of his consciousness, as well as the intricately layered stories related to him by various folk who may or may not be figments of his dreams.
TAN gets compared to both The Arabian Nights (of course), and The Name of the Rose (more of a stretch here for me, unless it's the similar time setting... though I suppose Symbolism is a shared feature); but it also reminded me rather strongly of Gene Wolfe's The New Sun trilogy, with Cairo coming over just as rotten and ancient as Nessus, and just as filled with wonder and strangely suggestive incomprehensibility.
A fascinating read, but not your standard one.
October 24, 2018
A comic romp through 19th century Cairo, cleverly disguised as a Kafkaesque take on One Thousand and One Nights, and culminating in a running gag about an innocent gull, a deadly riddle, and a talking ape who woos and occasionally wins a beautiful young woman in a hidden garden.
February 28, 2021
A labyrinth of tales... A circling fever-dream of truths and deceits and stories insinuated into the very consciousness of the reader...
The Nightmare may never end.
The Nightmare may never end.
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February 10, 2016A European visitor to Mamluke Cairo finds himself ensorcelled, plunging through a series of dreams and waking nightmares (the boundary is seldom clear) in which certain motifs - an ape and a woman, two imprisoned princesses, a child raised by beasts - recur like symptoms of a fever. Is he suffering from the notorious Arabian Nightmare, or only dreaming that he is, and what's the difference anyway? Meanwhile, the narrator holds our hand, even as the characters criticise him for his digressions and repetitions and general loss of impetus, and who can blame them when one chapter is entitled 'The Conclusion of the Continuation of the Interlude's Conclusion'? At times, the tale (or its tellers) is oddly coy, elsewhere horrifically explicit. I'd be very surprised if Neil Gaiman hadn't read this then relatively recent novel before embarking on Sandman - not just for the core interest in dreams, but because there's even reference to sleep and death as siblings. Irwin, though, has more of an interest in the dreams that don't really go anywhere, or spiral into cat's cradles of confusion. Here dreams and stories are not synonyms as they tend to be for Gaiman, but opponents, albeit opponents sometimes working in uneasy tandem. Many of the (slightly too numerous - it suggests something to prove) enthusiastic review quotes in my copy mention Borges, which makes sense. But I'm surprised none reference Flann O'Brien or Potocki, who seem even more obvious points of comparison, especially when we reach the silliest stretch, with the endless nest of stories within stories told by narrators who are not just unreliable but flat-out incompetent.
An aside: in my second-hand copy, there is no mark made by the previous owner, excepting solely page 92. Thereon, the following words are underlined: 'resin'; 'depilatory'; 'Toupées'; 'Codpieces'; 'shrouded'.
An aside: in my second-hand copy, there is no mark made by the previous owner, excepting solely page 92. Thereon, the following words are underlined: 'resin'; 'depilatory'; 'Toupées'; 'Codpieces'; 'shrouded'.
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July 29, 2011"Every visitor will find it hard to leave Cairo. It unfolds itself like a story that will never end."
In June 1486, the Englishman Balian, a pilgrim on his way to the monastery of Saint-Catherine in Sinai, arrives in Cairo hoping to obtain a transit visa from the Ma...meluke authorities and with a secret mission from the French court to spy on their decaying forces. However, on his very first night, Balian is afflicted by a strange sleep condition which he is told is the Arabian Nightmare. Desperate for a cure and hoping to escape various evil figures, he dissapears in the hallucinated dephts of the sweltering city and into the maelstrom of his own dreams.
"It would not be easy for Vane and the Father of Cats to find Balian. He was somewhere among the hundreds of thousands of Cairo's poor and maimed who whispered and drifted through the city like dead leaves. They were all half alive and barely rational. But all sorts of things with no rational voice moved across Cairo with them, winds, animals, spirits, moods."
This book which is built in a similar fashion to "The Thousand and One Nights", (and is indeed their starting point), is a sort of medieval freakshow that evoques the literary universes of both Lawrence Durell and Edward Said. Glorious in its grossness, it reminds one of "Salammbô". Surprisingly, it has the guts to start on a direct quote from Proust.
An amazing read, the action spirals downward into the realm of dreams (Al-Alam al-mithal) on a quest for the waking world. "What is quest? A quest is to ask a question while in motion, that's all."
In June 1486, the Englishman Balian, a pilgrim on his way to the monastery of Saint-Catherine in Sinai, arrives in Cairo hoping to obtain a transit visa from the Ma...meluke authorities and with a secret mission from the French court to spy on their decaying forces. However, on his very first night, Balian is afflicted by a strange sleep condition which he is told is the Arabian Nightmare. Desperate for a cure and hoping to escape various evil figures, he dissapears in the hallucinated dephts of the sweltering city and into the maelstrom of his own dreams.
"It would not be easy for Vane and the Father of Cats to find Balian. He was somewhere among the hundreds of thousands of Cairo's poor and maimed who whispered and drifted through the city like dead leaves. They were all half alive and barely rational. But all sorts of things with no rational voice moved across Cairo with them, winds, animals, spirits, moods."
This book which is built in a similar fashion to "The Thousand and One Nights", (and is indeed their starting point), is a sort of medieval freakshow that evoques the literary universes of both Lawrence Durell and Edward Said. Glorious in its grossness, it reminds one of "Salammbô". Surprisingly, it has the guts to start on a direct quote from Proust.
An amazing read, the action spirals downward into the realm of dreams (Al-Alam al-mithal) on a quest for the waking world. "What is quest? A quest is to ask a question while in motion, that's all."
May 2, 2012
For a long time when I awoke I didn't remember my dreams. And then my shins started furiously itching, and then I got a muscle twitch in my hamstring that went on for 36 hours straight, and then I couldn't sleep at all, drowning in my itching, twitching nightmare.
For those of you who are physicians, you might notice these symptoms. I had a severe electrolyte deficiency. I took several electrolyte replacement pills and all was well in a few hours. Okay, fine story, but what's this got to do with "The Arabian Nightmare"?
To forestall these symptoms from reappearing again, I've started to take magnesium on days that I sweat and drink a lot (the original cause of all this). And magnesium makes you dream and dream and dream (or enable you to remember them). I am remembering many dreams a night - it's kind of wild.
So it was weird to read a book where dreams, interpretations of dreams, nightmares, sleepwalking, and the stories about them make up most of the book - since I am in that dreamland at night.
Irwin is a medieval historian and this book is a wonderful vehicle to dive into 1400's Cairo where the Mamlukes, Christians and Ottomans are all conspiring and spying. The other concern of the book is storytelling and the ways stories evolve with the teller and the listener, kind of like a story of your dreams changes as you tell it. It might help to have gone through 1001 Arabian Nights and be used to the way the stories mutate.
The bonus in this edition is that there are plates by the artist David Roberts who was a painter/draughtsman in the early 1800's who made Egypt a specialty. The plates place the reader in the locales where much of the action takes place.
For those of you who are physicians, you might notice these symptoms. I had a severe electrolyte deficiency. I took several electrolyte replacement pills and all was well in a few hours. Okay, fine story, but what's this got to do with "The Arabian Nightmare"?
To forestall these symptoms from reappearing again, I've started to take magnesium on days that I sweat and drink a lot (the original cause of all this). And magnesium makes you dream and dream and dream (or enable you to remember them). I am remembering many dreams a night - it's kind of wild.
So it was weird to read a book where dreams, interpretations of dreams, nightmares, sleepwalking, and the stories about them make up most of the book - since I am in that dreamland at night.
Irwin is a medieval historian and this book is a wonderful vehicle to dive into 1400's Cairo where the Mamlukes, Christians and Ottomans are all conspiring and spying. The other concern of the book is storytelling and the ways stories evolve with the teller and the listener, kind of like a story of your dreams changes as you tell it. It might help to have gone through 1001 Arabian Nights and be used to the way the stories mutate.
The bonus in this edition is that there are plates by the artist David Roberts who was a painter/draughtsman in the early 1800's who made Egypt a specialty. The plates place the reader in the locales where much of the action takes place.
July 30, 2018
I sleep a great deal. If it was an Olympic event, I'd have won any number of medals at this point in my life. Robert Irwin knows sleeping! In The Arabian Nightmare, Irwin takes us through "Cairo -- that is, Babylon, the Great Whore, the many-gated city" as we follow Balian of Norwich (1486) in his endeavor to reach the shrine of St. Catherine. In short order we find that Balian is being paid as a spy for the French, seeking 'intel' on the Mameluke Dynasty and, very soon, he is overcome with "The Arabian Nightmare," a sleeping sickness whose sufferers gradually lose their minds, unable to differentiate between their protracted bouts of sleep and their waking lives.
The narrative digressions (I mean story, within story, within story, within story) get a bit intertwined, and -- perhaps because I'm dense or a lunkhead or something -- at times, confusing.
I was weaned on the Argentine writers Borges & Cortázar, along with a few others like Italo Calvino, and the fantastic nature of this work was ultimately satisfying, although slow going at times...
BUT: it is precisely that perceived torpor, drowsiness that somehow -- perversely -- permeates the novel... in a good way!
The narrative digressions (I mean story, within story, within story, within story) get a bit intertwined, and -- perhaps because I'm dense or a lunkhead or something -- at times, confusing.
I was weaned on the Argentine writers Borges & Cortázar, along with a few others like Italo Calvino, and the fantastic nature of this work was ultimately satisfying, although slow going at times...
BUT: it is precisely that perceived torpor, drowsiness that somehow -- perversely -- permeates the novel... in a good way!
January 28, 2016
I have a weird relationship with this book. On the one hand, it is well-written, a very effective dream book. On the other hand, it is the most frustrating book I have ever read, because it is such an effective dream book. I sort of threw it down the stairs at the end.
The reason I say it is so effective is that in this case, you literally never know what was dream and what was reality after the first chapter or so, because the main character is apparently dying of a mysterious illness called the Arabian Nightmare that poisons his mind. It is disturbing, and surreal, and very well done, and horribly frustrating to me. Insidious.
Also, there are some parts that might be distasteful to some readers, because lewdness.
In conclusion, you know a book was both high-quality and bothersome when you get a nervous twitch while writing the review!
The reason I say it is so effective is that in this case, you literally never know what was dream and what was reality after the first chapter or so, because the main character is apparently dying of a mysterious illness called the Arabian Nightmare that poisons his mind. It is disturbing, and surreal, and very well done, and horribly frustrating to me. Insidious.
Also, there are some parts that might be distasteful to some readers, because lewdness.
In conclusion, you know a book was both high-quality and bothersome when you get a nervous twitch while writing the review!
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February 16, 2018In our perception of reality, every waking moment, every sleeping moment, is processed through our brains in different states of activity. The fact that we remember one state more fully than the other, and that state has a consistent narrative, gives it authenticity.
Our poor, confused guide on this tour of Cairo does not have these benefits and the kaleidoscope of his perception puts us in the passenger seat of a journey through the looking glass.
This is "Magical Realism" at it's best! To the outsider, Bailen is a raving lunatic. From his narrative, he is caught in a celestial struggle. You get to decide which it is.
The simple, straight forward style balances the insane daisy chain of events making this book impossible to put down. I read it three times in a row and loved it more each time.
Our poor, confused guide on this tour of Cairo does not have these benefits and the kaleidoscope of his perception puts us in the passenger seat of a journey through the looking glass.
This is "Magical Realism" at it's best! To the outsider, Bailen is a raving lunatic. From his narrative, he is caught in a celestial struggle. You get to decide which it is.
The simple, straight forward style balances the insane daisy chain of events making this book impossible to put down. I read it three times in a row and loved it more each time.
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