Excerpt from One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt

One Aladdin, Two Lamps

Morning. Crisp as an apple.
Where are we?
On the street.
Here? In this city?
No. Another place.
When? Now?
Not now. Many years ago.
What are we doing here?
We're going to see a pantomime.


There's a snake of children wrapped around the theatre front to back.

It's eleven o'clock in the morning. The factory where my dad works has decided to take all the workers' children to a show at Christmas time.

I'm wearing a duffle coat and a pair of borrowed shiny patent shoes. I don't know anyone. My dad works in another town and rides his bike to the factory. All weathers. He can't afford the bus. Today is frosty and clear. I am cold in these shoes.

Inside, the small theatre has red velvet seats raked in front of the stage. The carpet is a swirl of acanthus leaves. The smell is toffee and Vimto.

I am on my own at the back. There's a sandwich in my pocket. Breakfast. Eat it.

Above the swagged curtains, there's a plaster medallion of Queen Victoria. She looks down in disapproval at the squab-bling rows of jostling kids.

The yelling stops. None of us has ever been to a theatre before.

The curtains are opening. Where are we?

Peking. A washhouse. Sheets piled up like snowdrifts. An angry mother shoots her head over a pile. Aladdin! Where are you? You lazy, good-for-nothing, hopeless, daydreaming-come-to-a-bad-end boy!

Aladdin is cross-legged on top of a tower of bright blue pillows. He's reading.


The Story of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is Britain's favourite pantomime. This tale, from China, via India and Persia, arrived with the Empire, in the early 1800s, with the fascination for all things Oriental. The Victorians loved it, shaping it to their own values. Rags to Riches. Poor Boy Makes Good. Hard Work Wins the Day.

Most of us know the story of Aladdin from Disney movies and the musical. The text is stranger, certainly because the story travelled mouth to mouth, before it was written down, and people have a way of adding what they want and losing what they don't. It looks like a Hero story, but that's not the truth of it.

Aladdin is a series of encounters. The outcomes are not fixed. The setbacks and reversals of fortune that make us cheer and boo are more than comedy turns. They tell a truth about human

chances, about the enmeshing of character and circumstances. This is a story, and the glory of stories is that they change.


Ten years later, I was walking to the library to return a book. A collection of tales called The Arabian Nights.

That version was only the few stories that everyone in the West knows so well. Sinbad the Sailor. Aladdin and his Magic Lamp. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The Fisherman and the Genie. I was hoping to discover the whereabouts of a magic lamp. Or a flying carpet. Anything to help me escape. The stained glass window in the Accrington Public

Library said Industry and Prudence Conquer.

This was a Carnegie library, paid for by the Scottish steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, who had gone to America, made a fortune, and endowed libraries all over the world.

This was how the story was supposed to go. Work hard.

Do well.

But ...

I am female. I am adopted. I felt more like Aladdin than Andrew Carnegie. A lifetime of hard work would never get me out of here. I was trapped in a story I didn't want to hear.


The librarian was interested that I was interested in tales from the East. She told me there was a complete text of the Nights in the Oriental Section. That was in the days when ordinary libraries in ordinary towns had an Oriental Section.

I opened the book.


One Thousand and One Nights begins with an ending. An ending that is intended to run on repeat until the world is dead.

* * *

There's a Sultan called Shahryar.

Excerpted from One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson. Copyright © 2026 by Jeanette Winterson. Excerpted by permission of Grove Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.