Author and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu discusses his new book Whatever Gets You Through the Night, an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights.

Codrescu reimagines how Sheherezade saved Baghdad’s virgins and her own life through a heroic feat of storytelling—one that kept the Persian king Sharyar hanging in suspense for 1001 nights.

For Sheherezade, the end of either suspense or curiosity means death, but Codrescu keeps both alive in this entertaining tale of how Sheherezade learned to hold a king in thrall, setting an unsurpassable example for all storytellers across the ages.