W. A. Darlington 4 hr 40 min read

A soldier's uniform button turns out to be forged from Aladdin's lamp, and rubbing it summons a very literal-minded genie.

W. A. Darlington's 1919 comic fantasy imagines the long-lost magic of Aladdin surviving into the Great War as a humble tunic button, unleashing wish-granting chaos on hapless Alf. A hugely popular, good-natured English humorous fantasy, later a stage and film hit. Read it for warm, farcical wartime comedy built on the oldest wish in fiction.

In its time

Published in 1919, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

4 hr 40 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).