Scheherazade tells stories to survive: if she can keep the king listening until dawn, she lives another day. The frame narrative generates tales within tales within tales, a labyrinth of merchants and genies, faithful wives and unfaithful ones, voyages and transformations. The collection grew over centuries, drawing from Persian, Indian, and Arabic sources. The Nights influenced everyone from Proust to Borges, and gave Western literature the pleasure of narrative delay, the sense that stories might go on forever if only we stay awake to hear them.