In the guise of a book about translation this is a richly original cultural history, a journey from the days when the Greeks simply ignored other languages and the Romans forced all subject peoples to learn Latin, to Google Translate.

ECONOMIST: Shape-shifting

And then there is the imaginative inspiration that the stories have given children - although, as Mr Irwin points out, many of the most famous characters like Ali Baba are not to be found in the original, but in Galland's translation.

BBC: Today

So Zhang, an ardent Buddhist, had set off along what we know as the Silk Road, to purchase original texts to bring them home for careful translation.

BBC: Following the Silk Road to the end of China

Much of his translation, which appears side by side with the original, is forthright.

NEWYORKER: The Commandments

When embarking on the original, Knopf, thinking the book was about sexual reproduction, assigned the translation to a retired professor of Zoology, Howard Madison Parshley, who possessed no more than college-level French and much less in the way of philosophy.

FORBES: Satmars, Simone de Beauvoir And semicolons