Arabian Nights of 1934

<b>A genre-bending novel of 1001 nights of no-holds-barred pre-code American movies distilled into a single fevered dreamworld.</b> <p/><i>Arabian Nights of 1934</i> is a journey through the fevered dreamworld embodied in American movies of the early 1930s: an era that closed abruptly with the enforcement of the Production Code in July 1934. It distills a thousand and one nights of Depression-era movie-going--plotlines closeups cityscapes wisecracks backchat and frantic outbursts--into a haunting parallel life the stories bleeding into one another as they did in the minds of the viewers whom they helped sustain. <p/>Two of those viewers it so happens are O'Brien's own parents in their restless youth--one impatient to experience the world beyond the screen one ready to take it on--and the glimpse we're afforded into the darkened theaters of their minds frames the book with an act of imagination at once tender and audacious.