Book Review: The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor

The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor- Fully Illustrated: A Tale from the Arabian Nights by Anonymous
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sindbad the Sailor first appeared on night 536 of Scheherazade’s 1,001 nights of storytelling, an epic endeavor that I consider to be the first filibuster in history. But I digress. Sindbad’s adventures are among my favorites of the Arabian Nights stories. You can imagine my delight as I held my copy of Albert Seligman’s latest publication, as he continues his Arabian Nights series of illustrated books with the collected tales of Sindbad (and yes, that is how his name is spelled).

The storytelling uses the translation made by Edward Lane in 1840, with a clean-up of grammar, punctuation and spelling by Seligman. I found the stories very easy to read. They’re laid out in a simple font as well, which lets the old-fashioned, often quite wordy storytelling shine in a clean light.

The collection of illustrations placed throughout the book is eye-popping with its intensity and variety. Many are black and white, but richly detailed. Page 69 features an Eric Pape black and white illustration done in 1923. The scene is at the bottom of the sea, with treasure chests and sea creatures and eerie skeletons and marine plants… The details are delicately worked, and there are so many of them to enjoy, I got lost in that particular illustration for quite a while. And I’ll return to it, I know. There’s plenty of full color illustrations too. The detailed bibliography in the back of the book turns this beautiful, entertaining volume into a solid reference book.