Before You Begin

Before you begin.

A tailor and his wife invite the Sultan's hunchbacked jester to supper in a city of China. When a mouthful of fish seems to kill their guest, an attempt to hide one death creates four competing confessions and draws the matter before the King.

The story then becomes a contest of narration. A broker, a reeve, a physician, a tailor and a famously talkative barber offer tales inside tales, moving through Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus before the frame returns to the apparently dead jester.

This anonymous tradition survives here in Richard F. Burton's 1885 English translation and arrangement. Its language and assumptions are historical. The edition preserves that record without endorsing it, while the illustrations refuse bodily ridicule and avoid depicting sexual coercion, punishment or mutilation.

The gallery follows the frame characters, nested storytellers and shifting cities. Its pre-reading Story System reveals only the supper and the four confessions. Ten recaps unlock after their reading units, and six optional Story Medallions pause at exact passages.

For adult readers: disability stigma, racist and religious slurs, slavery, sexual description, nudity, corporal punishment, mutilation, threats of execution and misogyny.