"After discovering that his wife cheated on him, the Sultan of Bagdad decides to pick a different woman every night and then execute her in the morning. The killing goes on until one day, he picks a woman named Schehrazade, and she figures out how to stay alive. Every night she tells him a tale, but she saves the end till the night after."

The first time I read the 1001 NIGHTS, l've started wondering about the girls who preceded Scheherazade. The image of all their dead bodies piling up right there, at the very beginning of the story, would not leave my mind. Knowing this, I could not resolve to go through the Schehrazade story with due serenity. I wanted to talk about them instead, the girls killed by a prince whom for ever enjoys total literary impunity."

- Hassan Musa