One Aladdin Two Lamps

Jeanette Winterson’s latest book is an essay of sorts: a wonderful dissertation about empathy and the call of imagination. She argues that love is not the great link in our lives, but rather the ability to imagine is our greatest strength. To illustrate her point, Winterson introduces us to Shahrazad, the storyteller in One Thousand and One Nights. And the essay turns. This is a story of a woman fighting for her life, but it is more than a feminist fable. This is the story of how we read, why we read and what we can take from reading, but again, it is more than a book about storytelling. This is the story of happenstance and hope. It is a story about where to find the truth.

Winterson searches in other people’s stories. Here, she has taken the well-known tales from One Thousand and One Nights and turned them into modern reflections. For example, the story of Aladdin becomes a question of illusion – or is it a story of greed and ego? Who, or what, is to be trusted? Is this snake oil or is it medicine? What is counterfeit? What is authentic? I don’t know of better questions for our own time.

I love everything Jeanette Winterson writes. I love the way she pulls stories apart, looks at them from different angles, from various reference points (the Bible, Shakespeare, Rowling, Collins and so many more), reflects on her own life (her own mother, the local library, the schoolyard), and then puts it all together again to ask us: who are you when you read? Her logic is this: when we see ourselves in fiction, we can change our own story. And if we can change our own story, imagine what we can do for others.

This book is the year’s most compelling and important read.