After the atrocity at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last summer, as questions of homophobia and Islam dominated the headlines, I pulled off the shelf my copy of the excellent three-volume Heritage Press edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainment Made and Annotated by Richard F. Burton.
It’s the annotations even more than the tales that have fascinated readers for, now, more than 130 years.
Burton was one of the most famous explorers, libertines and spies of the 19th century, a larger than life character limned in many biographies and sagas, including Fawn Brodie’s The Devil Drives, Alan Moorehead’s The White Nile, and the Bob Rafelson movie, “Mountains of the Moon,” in which he was played by Patrick Bergin opposite Iain Glen (now best known as Ser Jorah in “Game of Thrones”). Glen’s role was as Burton’s upper-crust companion and eventual nemesis John Hanning Speke, who went with him on the search for the sources of the Nile.