A collection of five fairy stories steeped in the Arabian Nights tradition; in the title novella, a narratology scholar at a conference in Istanbul frees a djinn from a bottle and is granted three wishes.
Books mentioned in The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (11)
A Thousand and One Nights: “Orhan Rifat was to speak last: his title was 'Powers and powerlessness: djinns and women in The Arabian Nights.' Gillian Perholt spoke before him.”
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: “She had chosen to analyse the Clerk's Tale from The Canterbury Tales, which is the story of Patient Griselda.”
Katha Sarit Sagara by Somadeva: “It has to be admitted, said Orhan, that misogyny is a driving force of premodern story collections – perhaps especially of the frame stories-from Katha Sarit Sagara, The Ocean of Story, to the Thousand and One Nights, Alf Layla wa-Layla.”
The Bacchae by Euripides: “Orhan stood against the ruined stage and said something incantatory in Turkish which he then explained to Gillian was Dionysus' first speech, his terrible, smiling, threatening speech at the beginning of The Bacchae.”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “'Listen, Gillian,' he said: 'I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres...' 'I was good,' said Orhan, '...It was his part. Shakespeare himself played the Ghost.'”
The Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown: “They say, 'Why have you come?' And Gilgamesh says, 'For Enkidu my friend. And to see my father Uta-Napishtim among the gods.'”
Shahnameh by Ferdowsi: “She spent her time sewing huge pictures in silk-pictures of stories – the stories from the Shahnama, of Rüstem and the Shah Kaykavus, who tried to emulate the djinns and fly...”
Romance by Walter de la Mare: “Tell me your poem. When I was but thirteen or so I went into a golden land, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi Took me by the hand.”
Weeping Willow by Nazım Hikmet: “The conversation moved to poets and politics: the exile of Halicarnassus, the imprisonment of the great Nazim Hikmet. Orhan recited Hikmet's poem 'Weeping Willow', with its fallen rider and the drumming beat of the hooves of the red horsemen, vanishing at the gallop.”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “The carpet-seller had written a Ph.D. on Tristram Shandy, and now travelled into Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, bringing back carpets on journeys made by camel, by jeep, into the mountains.”
Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: “than the hectic one of the wishes granted by Grimm’s flounder, or even Aladdin’s djinn.”