Richard van Leeuwen. The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction: Intertextual Readings; and Muhsin J. al-Musawi. The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

(and, in Chapter 1, cultural periodicals), leaving the reader uncertain whether the aesthetic responses Weiss identifies are also a feature of the broader Syrian cultural landscape, for example in poetry, drama, songs, or TV series. Although the monograph is written in clear and readable language, it is most accessible to a reader with some prior familiarity with Syrian and regional cultural and political history. The monograph is essential reading for anyone interested in Syrian cultural and intellectual history, contemporary Arabic literature and film, or the interactions between politics and aesthetic theory.