The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight has a bad reputation and a tattered history. For over a century, it has been known in English through Sir Richard Burton’s bizarre translation (from the French) which consistently elaborated and misinterpreted the original. If ever a book needed demystifying, it is this one. Although remarkably lewd at times, it does not linger over details nor does it contrive to excite. It does not, therefore, qualify as pornography. In fact, The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight is nothing more than a manual for the ordinary married man of its author’s time and place – Tunisia, in the early part of the 15th century – but one that is not without some entertainment value.

The present translation is not only the first, published English version to be based upon an established Arabic text, but also the first to be translated directly from the original Arabic at all.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.