Before You Begin

Before you begin.

An old fisherman allows himself only four casts of the net each day. On the last cast, he finds a sealed copper vessel: an object worth selling, perhaps, but also a question he cannot resist opening. The favour he does its prisoner soon becomes an argument about what one being owes another.

This is a story that thinks by telling more stories. A physician, a ruler, a falcon, a parrot and a traveller in the desert enter its chain of persuasion; each example has a speaker, a listener and something at stake. Keep an eye on who offers each warning, and on what changes when the same words are spoken by someone else.

The text is Richard F. Burton's 1885 English translation and arrangement of traditional, anonymous material. Its diction and night rubrics remain, as do depictions of killing, poisoning, torture, marital violence, adultery, enslavement, threatened cannibalism and racial, religious and gendered language now considered offensive. This is an adult historical edition, not an endorsement of those attitudes. Its illustrations avoid sexual acts, graphic injury, caricature and suffering as spectacle.

The gallery offers a visual guide to the people, objects and nested places of the tale. Six editorial reading units keep its full sequence intact; their recaps look backward, and the optional Story Medallions open only after their supporting passages. Begin with the net, the seal and the small space inside the vessel. The first question is how anything so large could have fitted there.