George Meredith 52 min read

The humble barber Shibli Bagarag is destined to shave the magically-protected Identical hair of the tyrant Shagpat, a mighty deed in a glittering Arabian-Nights fantasy.

George Meredith's 1856 novel is a sparkling classic of literary Oriental fantasy. Witty, ornate, gloriously inventive. Read it for a dazzling Arabian entertainment by a great Victorian novelist, a comic epic of enchanters, genii, and a barber's fantastical quest, brimming with wordplay and wonder.

In its time

Published in 1856, during the 1850s, fairy tale and moral fantasy for a mass reading public; the sensation novel stirs.

Reading it

52 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).