In the last quarter of 2016, the publishing firm Verbum published what is perhaps the definitive edition in the Spanish language of the Arab and Eastern literature classic, “The Arabian Nights.” This publication is the result of seven years of work by translator and Arabist Salvador Peña, who carried out the enormous task of updating the work and revealing the keys to the original text unknown to date, including the addition of passages that had been eliminated because of censorship. 

Salvador Peña, translator and Arabist. University of Malaga, Abdelfattah Kilito, expert on literature. Université Mohamed VI, Rabat, Hector Urien, narrator, and Luis Rafael Hernández, director of the Verbum publishing firm, will be taking part in the book’s presentation.

The event will be presented by Pedro Villena, the General Director of Casa Árabe. 

Until now, Spanish readers were able to enjoy this very rich, complex work because of prior well-known versions such as the one by Rafael Cansinos Assens, or another by a scholar from Spain’s Royal Academy of History, Juan Vernet. As mentioned by Luis Alberto de Cuenca, a member of the Institute of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures of the CCHS-CSIC, “Salvador Peña’s is [...] the most accurate, the most faithful and, at the same time, the most elegant and readable ever to have been published in the language of Cervantes. I have been familiar with it since its inception, and I can bear witness to its unmatchable integrity in terms of every aspect involved in producing a new version of a work. Even the many verses which here and there mark the original Arabic have been the subject of a poetic version in Spanish created by Professor Peña, who did not hesitate to dedicate himself fully to a task which constitutes an extremely important link in the chain of translations of The Arabian Nights into the Spanish language.”

The presentation at Casa Árabe will also include the participation of Abdelfattah Kilito, a renowned Moroccan essayist who specializes in classical Arabic literature and the author of the book El Ojo y la Aguja (The Eye and the Needle, published by Menoscuarto Ediciones), as well as a monograph published this year which is dedicated to untangling the stories which appear in The Arabian Nights and their relationship with readers. As for Héctor Urien, a storyteller who is very knowledgeable about this work, he will be contributing to this approach through oral communication, the original form of storytelling, so that the audience can also have the experience of listening to its words.