Frequently asked questions

About the story, the schedule, and your inbox

Why is it called "Thousand Emails and an Email"?

It's a direct echo of the book's own Arabic title, Alf Layla wa-Layla — literally "a thousand nights and a night," not just "a thousand nights." That extra "and a night" isn't decoration; storytelling traditions across Persian and Arabic culture use "a thousand and one" as an idiom for "more than you could count," the way English reaches for "a million" to mean the same thing — one past the round number, on purpose, so the total never quite closes. thousandemailsandanemail.com and "1,001 Emails" are both just that same gesture, carried over: not a tidy thousand, one more. (See the next question for more on where the "1,001" figure itself actually comes from.)

What translation is this, and why this one?

Right now, every night comes from Sir Richard Burton's 1885 translation — ornate, unabridged, and in the public domain, which is what let this project exist without needing anyone's permission to send it out nightly. It isn't necessarily the easiest translation to read: Burton wrote in a deliberately archaic, elaborate style even by Victorian standards. We're genuinely still weighing other translations, including the possibility of eventually licensing a modern one — subscribing today doesn't lock you into Burton's voice forever, and we'd rather say that plainly than pretend the choice is settled.

How do you adapt an 1885 work of literature to fit a modern inbox?

Mostly by trusting the original shape of the thing. The Nights was already structured as nightly installments with a cliffhanger built into almost every break — that maps onto a daily email almost without translation. What we added: a short address to the King opening each night and a closing line in Shahrazad's voice, so each email reads as one continuous telling rather than a pasted-in excerpt; a "preread" sent the moment you subscribe, carrying the frame story (who these people are and why she's telling stories at all) so Night 1 can just be the first tale, not a lecture's worth of setup; and a subject line that names whichever tale is currently running, so you always know what you're about to open.

Is this appropriate for younger readers?

We'd call it suitable for young adults and up. The Nights is not a children's book in its original form — Burton's translation in particular includes violence, frank sexuality, and material that wouldn't be out of place in adult literary fiction. If you're subscribing on behalf of a younger reader, we'd read a few nights yourself first.

Who is Shahrazad?

In the story: the Wazir's daughter, who volunteers to marry a king who has been executing a new bride every dawn, and stops him by telling him a story every night for what becomes 1,001 nights — always breaking off at the most dangerous moment, so that killing her would mean never learning how it ends. The text describes her as formidably well-read — poetry, history, philosophy, the sciences of her age — which is very much the point: her weapon is narrative craft, not charm.

How she's been seen, though, has shifted a lot depending on who's doing the telling. The tales reached Europe largely through Antoine Galland's French translation (1704–1717) — which is also where some of the most famous "Arabian Nights" stories, like Aladdin and Ali Baba, actually come from; they aren't in the original Arabic manuscript tradition at all, but were added by Galland from an oral source. That French-then-Western lineage tended to render Shahrazad and her world through an exoticizing, "Orientalist" gaze — Burton's own translation, ornate and full of his own editorializing, sits pretty squarely in that tradition. Read within Arabic literary scholarship, she tends to be treated less as a romantic or exotic figure and more as an archetype of intelligence overpowering brute force — a woman who out-thinks a tyrant and, in doing so, ends a policy of state murder. Worth keeping both lenses in mind as you read.

How many nights does this really take?

One night a day, 1,001 nights, comes out to about two years and nine months. Worth knowing going in: scholars generally think "a thousand and one" was originally an idiom for "countless" rather than a literal count — the frame story is believed to descend from an older Persian collection called Hazar Afsan, "a thousand tales." The manuscript tradition's actual night-count has varied a great deal across centuries and editions, and most "complete 1,001-night" printed editions, Burton's included, pad or divide tales here and there to land on the number. There's also a long-running superstition — noted with some affection by translators and scholars over the years, including Borges in his essay on the work's translators — that reading the Nights straight through to the end is unlucky. We're choosing to take that as part of the mystique rather than a warning.

So exactly how many emails is it, and when does it end?

Burton divides the ten volumes of his translation into exactly 1,001 numbered nights, from "When it was the First Night" to the thousand and first, and every one of them is here: none skipped, none merged. Counting the prologue, that's 1,002 emails. Before Night One arrives as soon as you subscribe, Night 1 at your next 8 pm, and then one night every evening until Night 1,001.

From Night 1 to Night 1,001 is 1,001 evenings, about two years and nine months. If you subscribed today, your last night would arrive around July 29, 2029. Pausing pushes that back by however long you pause; jumping ahead from your subscription page brings it forward.

The nights aren't equal in length, because they break where the original manuscripts put the dawn, not after a set number of words. A typical night is about a thousand words, five minutes or so of reading. The shortest is under 300 words; the longest is nearly 10,000, closer to forty minutes. Altogether it comes to about 1.2 million words.

Two famous tales you won't find: "Aladdin" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." Neither is among Burton's 1,001 nights. He translated them separately, in his six-volume Supplemental Nights (1886–88), which this doesn't include.

Will I want to skip ahead? How does the serial storytelling work?

The Nights is a story made of stories — Shahrazad tells tales within tales, some wrapped up in a single night, others running for dozens, each ending (almost always) on a cliffhanger. Not every tale will land for every reader. That's exactly why each email's subject line now names the tale currently running: if a particular story isn't grabbing you, you'll know at a glance, and you can jump past it from your subscription page (the link at the bottom of every night's email) — no need to sit through something you're not enjoying to get to the next one.

Can I change my delivery time, or read faster or slower than one a night?

You can change your timezone any time from your subscription page (the link at the bottom of every night's email) — that's what determines your 8 pm. The pace itself is fixed at one night per day by design; that nightly rhythm is the point. If you want to jump around rather than speed up — skip a tale, revisit where you were, start over — the same page lets you set your position to any night directly. It changes what arrives next, though, not how many emails you get in a day.

What actually happens when I subscribe?

Two emails, then one a night. The moment you subscribe, the preread arrives — the frame story, sent once. Then, at 8 pm in your timezone that same evening, Night 1 arrives: the first tale itself. After that, one new night lands every evening until you've read all 1,001 — or until you pause, skip around, or leave.

Can I pause and pick back up later?

Yes. Pausing from your subscription page (the link at the bottom of every night's email) stops the nightly emails without losing your place — switch back to Active whenever you're ready and it resumes exactly where you left off.

If I unsubscribe, can I come back? Do I restart from Night 1?

You can always come back, but unsubscribing does forget your place on purpose — resubscribing (from the homepage, or by reactivating via your old manage link) restarts you at Night 1. If you just want a break without losing your spot, pause instead of unsubscribing. And if you do restart and remember roughly where you were, you can jump straight back there from your subscription page (the link at the bottom of every night's email).

Is this free?

Yes. 1,001 Emails is free, and it's going to stay that way.

Will my email be sold or shared?

No. Your email address is kept confidential — we don't sell it, rent it, or share it with anyone, and we hold ourselves to maintaining that.

What if it lands in spam?

Worth checking your spam or promotions folder, especially for the very first email — mark it "not spam" or move it to your inbox, and adding the sending address to your contacts will help every night after that land correctly. We use Postmark specifically for reliable delivery, but no inbox provider is perfect.

Can I read a night again, or read ahead, on the site?

Not yet — that's out of scope for now. Right now, only the preread is readable on the site (here); every other night lives in your inbox, not in an online archive. It's something we might build later, but it isn't there today.