Memoir spotlight
One Aladdin Two Lamps
by Jeanette Winterson
A life in reading, told through One Thousand and One Nights.
Buy the book
Winterson uses the frame of the Arabian Nights to examine her own life as a writer, a reader, and a woman who escaped through stories.
Publisher's blurb
Synopsis
Part memoir, part essay on storytelling as survival, Winterson threads the tale of Aladdin's two lamps - the one you rub and the one you trade away - through episodes of her own life: the adoptive household, the libraries, the books that functioned as exits. As always with Winterson, autobiography and criticism are the same activity.
The editorial feature
Aphoristic, occasionally imperious, frequently brilliant. Readers who loved Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? will recognise the voice and find it older, funnier and less forgiving of easy consolation.
Book details
- Genre
- Memoir
- Released
- 20 January 2026
- Publisher
- Grove Press
- Featured on
- 20 January 2026
Where to buy
One Aladdin Two Lamps is available from these retailers.
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