How One Thousand and One Nights ignited the writing career of Waciny Laredj

Algerian author who won the 2023 Great Arab Minds award will discuss the book's impact at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

Waciny Laredj is a novelist and professor at Sorbonne University in Paris. Victor Besa / The National

In 1960 when Waciny Laredj was six years old and late to Quran school, he discovered what he thought was an old copy of the holy book left on his classroom's bookshelf. The book was missing its cover, its pages yellowed, ripped and tattered. The other pupils had avoided the book, but Laredj did not have much choice. He picked it up and made his way to his desk.

“I began reading it and for the first time, I felt like I was understanding the Quran,” says the Algerian author, who will be appearing at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, which starts next week. “I was so absorbed by it, I decided to take it home.”

The book was inextricable from Laredj’s hands. He spent his days at home reading and rereading it. It was not until his cousin came over one day that he realised the book was not the Quran.

“My cousin asked me what I was reading, and I said it was the Quran,” Laredj, who is a professor at Sorbonne University in Paris, says. “He took the book from me and started laughing. It turned out I had been reading One Thousand and One Nights.”

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, awarding Waciny Laredj the Great Arab Minds award for Literature and Arts in 2023. Victor Besa / The National

The copy Laredj had taken was based on the 1835 Bulaq edition, which was published by the Egyptian government. The edition began with the Basmala Islamic invocation, which is why a six-year-old could have mistaken the collection of folktales for a sacred text. One Thousand and One Nights was nonetheless instrumental in instilling in Laredj an early fascination with Arabic, a language that was banned from schools in Algeria during the French colonial period and taught only at Quran centres.

“I don’t know how the copy of One Thousand and One Nights had ended up at that centre,” he says. “I think that was the foundation of my relationship with Arabic. It showed me how the language could be used to address not sacred matters, but human ones.”

One of his career-defining works, The Disaster of the Seventh Night after the One Thousand Night (1993), draws its title as well as several themes from the folktales. In it, Laredj uses the structure and rhythm of the original collection to reflect on subjects and issues in contemporary Algeria.

“It was written to the rhythm of One Thousand and One Nights,” Laredj says. “Maybe that’s what gave the book the luck to spread globally and with multiple translations.”

Laredj reflects on the book as his moment of “literary awareness”, saying he had written about social and everyday issues before, but The Disaster of the Seventh Night after the One Thousand Night marked a new chapter in his output. It also generated a new fascination with One Thousand and One Nights, and helped hone his penchant for reframing classic stories in a contemporary fashion.

“There are texts [that] when placed in the balance of time are invalidated,” he says. “But then there are works that endure, such as One Thousand and One Nights. How many times has it been burnt by extremists? Yet, every time it burns, it reignites and comes back. Like a phoenix. It has been a reference text, not only for Arab writers like Naguib Mahfouz, but also for the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Marcel Proust.”

The Disaster of the Seventh Night after the One Thousand Night by Waciny Laredj. Photo: Dar Ward For Publishing and Distribution Amman

During one of his panel discussions at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, Laredj will address the impact of One Thousand and One Nights on his life and work. He will speak about how his penultimate release, Hizya: The Sigh of a Slaughtered Gazelle as told by Lalla Mira, incorporates narrative styles found in the classic collection, while giving a novel twist to a romantic Algerian folktale.

“The novel is heavily influenced by the structure of One Thousand and One Nights,” he says. “Hizya is a story similar to Romeo and Juliet or Layla and Majnun, but here the female character takes on another role and is more resilient.”

His second appearance at this year's festival, which runs until February 3 at the InterContinental Dubai Festival City, will be alongside Egyptian novelist Mohammed Al Mansi Qindeel. The two will be speaking about “literature as a means for transportation”.

“The session will be about how reading opens doors for us and lets us travel,” he says. “I read Murakami and I’m in Japan. I read Abu Alaa al-Maari, and I’m in the medieval Arab world.”

While Laredj has appeared at the LitFest before, this will be his first participation since winning the prestigious Great Arab Minds award in 2023. He has also won other Arab literary prizes, including the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2007, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011 and 2014, and the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel in 2015.

For Laredj, these prizes are akin to Newton’s apple. He says: “You're asleep under a tree, enjoying the shade and suddenly an apple falls on you. It’s a beautiful moment. We don’t go towards prizes. They come to us.” The awards have opened doors for his career and led him to travel to unexpected places, he says.

“In these cases, I always remember my childhood when I was in a small village that doesn't even exist on maps,” he says. “One time I was in Los Angeles and looking at those high-rise buildings and I suddenly remembered myself as a little boy. I wondered if he would have ever thought 60 years ago that he’d reach that place. Impossible.”