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I think Sinbad was the first big adventure exploration book I ever read. Easily the best subset of the Arabian Nights. The big innovation was making a trader the hero rather than a mythic warrior hero.
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Merchants are never heroes in western stories. Either comic relief or villains. Imagine LOTR with Aragon as a trader. Wtf was Aragon’s job in exile anyway? Did he work private security for caravans between Rivendell and the Shire?
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Even as a kid, I appreciated the fact that Sinbad made money off each adventure and returned richer every voyage. And didn’t apologize for it. He kept going adventuring out of restless boredom, not some heroic call.
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I don’t think so… the story is not as familiar on the west, and the setup is mediocre anti-heroic. Sinbad is a profit-seeking trader, usually a villain type in western space opera.
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Check out Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz if you haven't! It's a modern sequel to the original stories that is excellent. Scheherazade.2 is John Adams excellent musical take on the stories, which is heavily inspired by the classic by Rimsky-Korsakov.
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