E. K Johnston describes ''1000 Nights'' as a work fashioned around the creation of beautiful crafts charged with magic. She confesses that her setting is not historically accurate, explaining, ''I cheated a bit, because the usual date for the stories ranges from Middle Persian literature to the Caliphate Era, and I set the book about two thousand years before that.'' Her locations are beautifully evoked and based on her sensory experiences as an archaeologist in Jordan. A Turkish bath in Amman, the Umayyad palace on top of the Amman Citadel and the swirling sands at Wadi Rum are just a few sources she has used to recreate the spirit of Lo Melkhiin's dangerous ''qasr'' (Middle Eastern palace) juxtaposed with the mercurial nature of his wife's desert home.