Every night, a woman tells a story to save her life. Every morning, she lives one more day. The story of Shahrazad and the Sultan goes like this: for one thousand and one nights, with her execution looming, Shahrazad tells a story. Against his wishes, the Sultan is entranced, and delays her punishment so that she can finish it. And so the cycle continues, until storytelling has saved Shahrazad''s life. With her signature wit and wisdom, Jeanette Winterson opens the stories of the Arabian Nights and asks us to look again at what we think we know, and how these ancient stories reveal essential questions about our modern world. Who should we trust? Is love the most important aspect of life? What makes us happy? And most importantly, can we change the ending to our own story? As a child and a young woman, covert visits to the library turned Jeanette Winterson into a reader and expanded the possibilities for her future. Her life transformed from fact to fiction and gave her the courage to alter the endings she did not want to happen. The defiant response of Shahrazad: I can change the story because I am the story. A celebration of the value of literature in our contemporary world and a delightful recounting of some of our oldest stories: Jeanette Winterson shows us how storytelling can change all of our lives as we know them.

Autorentext
Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester. She published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, at twenty-five. Over two decades later she revisited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. Winterson has written thirteen novels for adults and two previous collections of short stories, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in Spitalfields, London.

Klappentext

*An invitation to change our lives and imagine the world anew through reading stories, in the new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit*

I can change the story because I am the story.

'Makes you think and makes you laugh' Nigella**

With her execution looming, a woman is fighting for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps cracks open the legendary story of One Thousand and One Nights to show how its questions are still relevant to our lives today. Is love the most important thing in the world? What makes us happy?

In her guise as Aladdin, Jeanette Winterson asks us to reread what we think we know and look again at how fiction works in our lives, giving us the courage to change our own narratives and alter endings we wish to subvert. As a young working-class woman, with no obvious future beyond factory work or marriage, Winterson realised through the power of books that she could read herself as fiction as well as fact.

Weaving together fiction, magic and memoir, this remarkable book is a tribute to the age-old tradition of storytelling and a radical step into the future - an invitation to look more closely at our own stories, and to imagine the world anew.

**'Enchanting, unexpected and razor-sharp' Kamila Shamsie

'One of the most gifted writers working today' New York Times

In her hands, words are fluid, radiant, humming' Evening Standard**