This is the perspective of reading the book in Arabic from a native English speaker:

How do I describe a collection of short stories like this? Clearly, it is impossible to doubt the quality of the stories, each of which was interesting and entertaining in its own right. My favorites were the ‘Tale of the Lamp’ in which we see a starved traveler stumble upon a rich kingdom, and ‘The Night and the Sea’ which painted a bleak but moving picture with its rich descriptions and overwhelming emotions.

Unfortunately, the beautiful use of language means that the language is also suitably hard. Devilishly hard. Consider the first sentence of the first (supposedly easiest) story:

“اشتهيت الازاد و انا ببغداد، عفواً، بل زعموا والله اعلم أن سنة جفاف و القحط و المحل و المجاعة و المسغبة عفانا الله!” (حكاية القنديل ص ١٧)

They claimed, and god knows it was true, that it was a year of drought, famine, misery, hunger and starvation, god preserve us all. P. 18

Or this sentence from Naguib Mahfouz’s short story about Siamese twins:

“و فارت من الأعماق موجة عمياء جرفت ستر الحياء، فارتطم الاندفاع بالندم” (قسمتي و نصيبي ١٢٦)

They would clash in a vortex of fiery and crazed outbursts. A raging wave would emerge from the depths, removing any sense of shame while impetuosity superseded regret. P. 126

I would like to think of myself as an advanced student, despite my terrible writing, but I found many of these stories extraordinarily hard. Were it not for the translations in English these stories would have been too much to handle. I tried to read the entire Arabic story before resorting to the English translation however I found myself switching back after only a page to make sure that I understood the next section in Arabic. Also, when I showed the book to a group of Saudi friends, and as soon as one opened up the book and read the first sentence, one asked me ماذا قنديل؟ after saying, “This stuff is hard for us too.”

Considering the difficulty of the texts, the structure of footnotes and translation is important. But I was disappointed by how the book placed footnotes and the end of the story, necessitating multiple bookmarks and needless page flipping. Worse, the translations did not line up with the Arabic, and often spilled over on to the next page. So reading these stories was harder than it could have been.

In the end, the important thing is that there are translations, and for that this book deserves praise. But be warned, if you want to read this for its Arabic content, be prepared for a challenge.