The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight

The title has an extraordinary beauty in itself; it could pass for poetry. This beauty perdures too in the content: It is about eroticism in what seems a period of high civilization in the Islam.Perhaps Sir Richard Burton has merit because his generosity as translator and the richness of his notes; but the style of what is narrated speaks of the author, Shaykh Nefwazi, as an intelectual of enciclopedic knowledge and a refined man of culture. The theme is sexual, treated without contempt or shame but indeed has multiple references of previous scholars and even from different cultures. Each chapter have an explanation, references, and amusing stories to illustrate his points. There are many stories I will never forget.Despite being written in the XV century this book still has validity in our days for both men and women in our modern society. It is even a pity that sexuality is not afforded publicaly in the way Nefwazi does but mostly instead as worthless gossip or something cold and medical. The only part that has been surpassed is the preparation of several remedies for improvement of sexuality, but that is thanks to advancement in medicine. In advancementes of us as society, about how both and men should be sensual to each other in words, caresses and perfumes; in cunning and care; in physical aspect and in love making in general... that I am afraid the modesty is a frontier that still set us inside the borders of a country called ignorance, without giving us the opportunity to be happy and make others happy. I wholeheartedly recommend this volume for edification of oneself and even if you don't care that much about the theme for your amusement due its sheer literary quality.

A classic and surprising ancient book on making love. Much of the text delivers a surprise, particularly because it was written in what today is the Muslim world. The emphasis on assuring sexual pleasure for women as well as men . The respect it shows for women does not seem to reflect today's use of Chadors and Burqas as a mandatory garment in most of the Muslim countries. I don't know what these people do in the privacy of their homes, but I hope that they take the message of this remarkable book to heart.

When I read an article about this book I was interested to know the arab version of the kama sutra where the pleasures of women seem to also be covered. I found that. I found also a lot "machista" comments and stories, bias against certain types of women, some very weird recipes for different sexual ailments and many funny stories. It is overall very well written and the arab ability to tell good stories is spread across all the pages making it a good entertainment.

It's a bit of a tedious read, but at its heart, this is a wonderful book

A must read

Unlike other versions of this book, the one is properly formatted and edited and is not a simple OCR of an old version from the last century. As for the content, it is simply an excellent read of adult couples desiring to spice up their sexual life. The content is erotic and sometimes explicit, but it gives valuable insights of the sexual practices that prevailed during the twelfth century.

It effectively was written as an ancient sex education manual, I learned useful things about female anatomy I never knew before.

I already have a hard copy and this was to allow me to have one on my kindle as well

Don't go off by my one star, I just haven't read it yet