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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.

© Jeanette Winterson 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025