Nightbooks

Scheherazade is a character in One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern and Indian tales. One Thousand and One Nights employs a frame story, which is a narrative premise that “frames” the main narrative or a set of stories. The frame of One Thousand and One Nights introduces Scheherazade, the daughter of the vizier of King Shahryar. Shahryar once had an unfaithful wife, and ever since her infidelity, he has married a new wife each night and then killed each bride the next day, fearing that women are always unfaithful. After marrying and killing all the women of noble blood over three years, King Shahryar marries Scheherazade, who believes she can reform him. On her wedding night, Scheherazade tells the first half of a story, stopping at a particularly tense place in the narrative, prompting her husband to keep her alive so that he can hear the rest of the story the next night. She understands that she must maintain his interest in her tales so that he will not execute her; after over a thousand nights of successful storytelling, the king decides to permanently spare Scheherazade’s life.