Tim Supple's One Thousand and One Nights is a musical and theatrical event and uses the stories adapted by Hanan al-Shaykh Performed by actors, musicians and a creative team from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Paris and London, the production is touring the world and the European Premiere will be at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011 Hanan al-Shaykh has read every one of the original stories and created an intoxicating re-telling in nineteen stories, illuminating the characters and their stories with crackling, saucy wit and effortless charm

'Comic, tender, mischievous ... A fearless, pioneering writer' Independent 'What a woman!!! What a storyteller!!!' Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis 'One of the finest writers of her generation' Financial Times 'Al-Shaykh writes with a pen that is neither East nor West but entirely her own' Los Angeles Times

Hanan al-Shaykh is one of the contemporary Arab world's most acclaimed writers. She was born in Lebanon and brought up in Beirut, before going to Cairo to receive her education. She was a successful journalist in Beirut, then later lived in the Arabian Gulf, before moving to London. She is the author of the collection I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops and her novels include The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues and Only in London, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Most recently she published the acclaimed memoir of her mother's life, The Locust and the Bird. Hanan al-Shaykh lives in London.