17. The Arabian Nights
This collection of fairy tales touches on Middle Eastern, Indian, North African, Chinese and Greek culture. If you’ve read or watched stories about genies, evil overlords, and flying carpets, they all stem from these fairy tales. And they are obviously all adaptable by any writer.
Whether you want to write direct adaptations or take a more original route and place new contemporary or classic characters—treasure hunters, adventurers, etc.—into those stories, The Arabian Nights remains to be one of the most untapped collections of stories in Western countries beyond Disney’s Aladdin animated feature.
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