新买了企鹅版的《天方夜谭》（The Arabian Nights, Tales of 1001 Nights），Malcolm C. Lyons英译，据说是自1888年Richard Button英译以来的第一个全译本。

“夜”的故事，只是零星知道几个（好像说来说去就那几个），从没读过全本的，全本的好处当然是能了解那1001个故事的结构——AS Byatt在The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye里说

What delights above all in the Arabian Nights is its form. Story is embedded in story, story sprouts out of the midst of story, like the Surinam toads out of the back of their mother toad, which Coleridge used as a metaphor for his unruly imagination. The collection resembles both a group of Russian dolls, formally similar, faces and colours different, and a maze or spider-web with threads and passages leading to all directions, both formless and orderly at once.

那些故事大概是一点点聚集起来的，那么套娃结构或蛛网结构似乎是最自然的组织形式了——否则就只有串联，那是最无聊的，国王可能早就听腻了，哪儿还能让你讲三年呢！