A young Englishman, posing as a pilgrim, arrives in Cairo and finds himself drawn into a multitude of ominous and ridiculous, absurd and monstrous adventures and intrigues. Carrying out a spy mission, he encounters wise dwarfs, robbers, magicians, Mamluks, and prostitutes. In grotesque form, the author sets different traditions of thinking against one another, and the narrator—apparently—serves as the genuine author of “The Thousand and One Nights”…