Not an Essay
Title: One Hundred Nights of Hero
Author: Isabel Greenberg
Publisher: Jonathan Cape / Penguin Random House
Length: 224 pages
Type: Paperback
Age group: 15 years onwards (PG for mature young teens because of some adult themes)
Genre: Graphic Novel/Fiction
It is perhaps befitting that we talk about ‘One Hundred Nights of Hero’ in the same week that women have been told that they don’t matter. Whether it is our capital city or Jamui or the fabled halls of Cornell, women you must know your place and you must stay within. Or else. . .
One Hundred Nights is a feminist retelling of Arabian Nights. The world is the same. The women have little agency. Just like in Mahabharata, men have a wager regarding their wife and decide her fate (we should name her really), Cherry, who the husband (Jerome) is sure she’s deceitful, stupid and unfaithful. He’s right on all counts except one. Accompanied by Hero, her maid and lover, they hatch a plan to take Manfred (the friend) to take him on a ride every night, telling him stories. The wager being – if he can show his friend that his wife was unfaithful, he would win his castle. And Cherry (on the proverbial cake er castle).
Or some such. Regular Monday for a regular man. Or so it seems. After all curfews, an essay or a janana ghar is enough to keep the men in check!
What follows are a series of retellings of many myths, legends and folk-tales all tied together with the league of storytellers – all that makes us human. Hero’s retelling of the stories is filled with dry wit and subdued anger and one relates, sympathises, laughs with the characters of the story and the characters in the story within the story.
My daughter, Kyra (13) and I read this more than a month back, but life and laze happened. And as last week progressed I kept going back to the fables in the book and the characters within grappling with the same questions as that of Cherry, the same unease as that of the two sisters, the cleverness and the quiet subversion of the twelve dancing sisters and felt just tired.
The world might be medieval, but the unease and the themes are very real.
The cover is gorgeous, the art is too. But the font!! The font is horrible and my old eyes really struggled with it. Do read. Let your daughters read. More importantly, let your sons read. And read it with them.
If you are intrigued by this review, you can order the book from Amazon (kbc affiliate link),
CLICK & BUY NOW!Disclaimer: Mandira is part of the #kbcReviewerSquad and received this book as a review copy from the publisher via kbc. She is the author of the award winning book Children of the Hidden Land. Her second book Muniya’s Quest for middle graders is simply brilliant! Her latest release, Off With Their Heads is a Dystopian Novel Set in an AI-driven World.
