The Storyteller's Daughter

The Storyteller's Daughter is a novel by Cameron Dokey, published in 2002 and based on the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. It begins with a king who has been betrayed.

The betrayal wounds him deeply and leaves him bitterly angry, and he swears that he will never be deceived again. The way he chooses to make sure of it puts every young woman in the realm in danger, and the only release from it is for one of them to volunteer to marry him and give up her life.

To general relief and horror, one young woman steps forward. She is Shahrazad, the daughter of a legendary storyteller, and she believes it is her destiny to accept the risk and sacrifice herself.

The novel is about why she volunteers and what she does on the night of her wedding, and it takes the frame of the old tales and turns it into the story of a woman who has decided that her own life is the price of stopping something worse.