A Thousand Nights / Nafiza Azad & Intisar Khanani, Editors / Book Review

A THOUSAND NIGHTS

Nusaybah doesn't want to leave her home, but she doesn't have a choice. Her mother, father, brother, grandparents have been buried now, and there's nothing more for her here. Especially with the Occupiers on their way.

Fleeing across the desert is her only option. Across the desert, she can find refuge. With invading forces at her heels, she has no time to rest and to doubt. There's only moving forward, but Nusaybah doesn't have to do it alone.

Hers isn't the only life that's been uprooted. First she finds one refugee. Then another, and another. Setting out across the desert isn't her burden alone. Together, they push on with stories of hope, of home, and of magic, heading toward whatever the future holds.

THOUGHTS

This book is an arduous journey. It takes a very long time to read and digest. The journey that Nusaybah and her companions are undergoing isn't an easy one, and this isn't an easy read. But it is, at its core, a book of fairytales. It's written in a more traditional style than I've seen in a long, long time, echoing the whimsy and the hope and the odd touches of magic that a fairytale collection needs. And that's exactly what this collection should be.

PROS

Frame Narrative	This is a book made up of a collection of stories, an anthology of different voices and experiences, and it is all tied together by a group of intrepid refugee kids finding their way to hope and safety. And I loved the story of these kids binding this whole collection together. They're storytellers, these kids, and the people they meet on the road are storytellers, too. That's how the stories get woven in. At its heart, this is a book of found family, literally found right there on the roadside as they seek brighter futures. There are tensions and hopes and irritations and dreams, all bound up in a group of kids who have nothing but each other left in this world. And I loved this family dynamic they build as they find each other on the journey.
Fairytale Essence	When people describe stories being like a fairytale, they're inevitably thinking Happily-Ever-After, Whimsy-and-Magic, Disney-Princess-style fairytale. Or perhaps they mean the dark and bloody "real" fairytales inspired by the Grimm Brothers. But most fairytales, including a large portion of the tales recorded by the Grimm Brothers, are just... kind of random? They're snippets of stories, morally obscure, tangential and not in the least bit concrete. And that's kind of how these stories function, too (and trust me when I say this is a compliment, even if it doesn't sound like one). The stories in this book might be prompted by the refugee kids and the harsh conditions they're facing, but the actual stories themselves are... kind of random. They're scattershot stories of different genres, influences, and cultures put together in a rather piecemeal fashion, and that reminds me very much of a fairytale collection. Fairytales aren't dreamy and whimsical. They are oral traditions passed down, sometimes incomplete and obscure, and that's what this collection really emulates. They're just the right pieces needed to boost the spirits of these kids on their journey, nothing more.
Shades of Experience	This collection of stories comes from a cohort of Muslim women writers who embark on a process of embracing and exchanging cultures, myths, and religious tenants to gird the refugee tale here. And it's such an incredibly diverse book! Islam is one of the biggest religions in the world, and these authors have come from various regions, cultural backgrounds, and ethnic identities that are reflected in this book. The Muslim experience isn't a singular experience, and the stories in this book reflect just how diverse the community is. It's such a nice diversity to find in a book that is already, by U.S. publishing standards, particularly diverse for featuring WOC and Muslim authors in the first place. To find such strength in diversity in this book's representation of culture and heritage on top of Muslim representation more generally is pure magic.

CONS

Though I liked the way these stories really do emulate traditional fairytale collections in their tone and their structures, I will also say that, as a collection of short stories for the contemporary reader, they just... don't quite work. That is to say that a lot of these stories just aren't very good isolated on their own. That can be true for a lot of the story fragments in the big fairytale collections, but when you're picking up a book like this that's published in 2026, you expect the stories themselves to have some weight. To stand on their own two feet as an independent story outside of the larger book structure. A lot of these tales felt very prompted by the current predicament of the refugee kids, and so they also felt a bit more prescriptive, didactic, and even moralistic than a good story (in the modern sense) should be. They were too involved with their own lessons of hope to really create compelling narrative structures separate from the overarching frame narrative of the collection as a whole. And a collection like this needs to function on both sides, on an individual story level and as a larger collective.	Didactic, Prescriptive
This book feels timeless. Not like timeless classic, but like it doesn't quite fit into any one moment, event, or space. Which definitely fits the fairytale essence but also adds to a sort of dissonance in this book. The timelessness gives an eeriness to the plight of these refugee kids, like they have been and always will be displaced human beings. Because there's no real sense of where and when and why this is happening to these kids, because the big enemy of this book is just the Occupiers, it adds a sort of eternal, fablelike quality to the plight of this children that is just... kind of depressing. Which leads right to my next criticism.	Timelessness
This book is really heavy to get through not because of the outright subject matter (there is, after all, no excessive on-the-page violence and horror that happens to these kids) but because of the overall melancholic nature of this book. It feels tough to read. It is a story of displacement, suffering, and human tragedy that, because it is also a fable, has no end in sight. It is perpetual. And you know what? There is a very good reason for that. At this very minute, there are children in the world undergoing hardship as bad as or worse than those faced by the refugee kids in this book. There are children in Palestine whose grandparents didn't know peace, and so their own futures can look and feel hopelessly bleak. So there is a time and a place for these stories. Of course there is. But that doesn't mean that this book doesn't feel heavy, melancholic, and, to a great extent, hopeless. Hope is a driving feature in this book. It is a motivating factor. It is even a note to end on. But that doesn't mean that hope is the feeling that a reader leaves with after finishing this book. Because these voices have so long been hushed and repressed in the Western world, the stories that come through are, by necessity, stories of resilience. This is a story of resilience. But it is not a story of joy, and it takes a very long time to digest the material in this book because of that. So readers be warned.	Melancholic Drudgery

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
7/10

Those who appreciate the color, flavor, and love that went into rendering New Delhi in Sheba Karim's The Marvelous Mirza Girls will like the care and attention in bringing this array of cultural traditions to life. Those who liked the timeless touchpoint in Cynthia Leitich Smith's anthology Legendary Frybread Drive-In will love following these refugee kids as they seek a better future and find stories of hope told along the way.

Details Publisher: Candlewick Date: September 8, 2026 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley and Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.