One Thousand and One Nights
Jeon Jin-Seok and Han SeungHee's manhwa, serialized in Korea between 2004 and 2009 and translated for English-language readers by Yen Press, retells the classic frame story of Scheherazade with a deliberate twist. In a stylized medieval Arabia, the king Shahryar has been so wounded by his queen's infidelity that he now marries a new bride every night and has her executed at dawn. To stop the killings, a beautiful young scholar named Sehara, who happens to be a young man, takes his sister's place at the wedding and begins to spin a different story for the king every evening, ranging from the doomed love affair of Antony and Cleopatra to the legend of Helen of Troy. Jeon plays the gender reveal and the slow thaw between Sehara and Shahryar with restraint, and Han's elegant black-and-white art keeps the frame intact across eleven volumes. The series is one of the most loved Korean adaptations of the Arabian Nights.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about One Thousand and One Nights
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
To stay alive in the bed of a king who kills his wives at dawn, Scheherazade tells him a story each night and stops it just before sunrise. Inside her stories, more stories open and open.
Yes. The original Arabic stories of One Thousand and One Nights date to the medieval Islamic Golden Age and are in the public domain. Sir Richard Burton's 1885 English translation is free; modern translations like Husain Haddawy's remain copyrighted.
Children's versions exist (Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba) but the unabridged collection contains adult content, violence, and complex moral ambiguity. The full collection is suitable for adult readers.
One Thousand and One Nights was written by Chin-sŏk Chŏn, published in 2005 by Ice Kunion.
One Thousand and One Nights is 200 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, One Thousand and One Nights takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
One Thousand and One Nights is a standalone novel by Chin-sŏk Chŏn, not part of a series.
One Thousand and One Nights is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.