Pre-Arabian Tales

       A neat-sounding volume coming out from Penguin Classics is Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange -- described by Robert Irwin in (what I assume is) his Introduction, here reprinted in The Independent as The earliest known Arabic short stories in the world have just been translated into English for the first time.
       Among the translation(-and-translators-)-move-in-mysterious-ways observations:

I suggested to Malcolm Lyons, the translator of a recent edition of the Nights, that having completed that mighty task, he might consider translating Tales of the Marvellous. He sounded unenthusiastic and I thought no more about it. Then, last summer, he emailed to let me know that he had completed the translation.

       In any case, I look forward to seeing this.
       See also the Penguin Classics publicity page, or get your copy from Amazon.co.uk, or pre-order from Amazon.com.