Malcolm Lyons, in his introduction to the book, states it was the strangeness of the plotting and the imagery that appealed to early Western readers. Although the book begins with a framing story, the subsequent tales are told one within another, like nesting dolls. Each tale is interrupted with “but morning overtook Sheherazade, and she lapsed into silence. Then her sister said, “Sister, what an entertaining story!” Sheherazade replied, “What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night!”.

In the original manuscript, each story was punctuated with these words, but translators abandoned this repetitive device and the stories were just listed one after the other, presumably because it was considered too repetitive. Western readers of the eighteenth century would have seen them as tales of wonder with the inclusion of jinni and magical transformations. Galland’s early translation (1704) was intended to instruct his readers in the manners and customs of the Orient along with lessons in morality.

Shahriyar, on discovering his wife has been unfaithful with a kitchen servant, has her put to death. Fearing further sexual betrayals, he takes virgins to be for one night, having them beheaded the following morning. The vizier's daughter, Sheherazade, volunteers against her father’s wishes, and when she comes before the Sultan, she asks that her sister Dunyazade might attend her.

Sheherazade was described as possessing courage, wit, and perception beyond what was expected of her sex. This was attributed to her reading of philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts. She is brought to the Sultan, and after she has slept with him, her sister Dunyazade asks for a story, and Sheherazade tells of the “Merchant and the Demon.”. She does not tell the full story, and so Shahriyar agrees to postpone her execution. The next night she begins another story within the first and therefore does not conclude the story. These initial stories are about life and death, and if the person is spared, God will spare the judge. This goes on for years, and she becomes the mother to several of his children, causing him to repent of his desire to execute her.

The tale of Aziz and his cousin Aziza begins with an arranged marriage, but Aziz walks out into the souq while the arrangements are being made and sees a beautiful woman sitting at a window. She drops her handkerchief to gain his attention and makes various signs, which when he returns to Aziza, she interprets for him. These signs of courtship increase his desire for the woman and cause Aziza further distress. Aziza tells him she wants to meet him in the garden that evening, and when he arrives, he is presented with a pavilion full of rich food and drink. He is tasked with proving his love by staying awake all night but fails many times due to his lack of self-control. When he finally succeeds, the woman admits she had been planning to do him harm, and only Aziza’s rhyme about fidelity and deceit saves him.

Aziz stays with her for over a year, and when walking in the street one day, he meets an old woman who asks him to read a letter from her son. She then takes him to her daughter to enable her to hear the contents of the letter. Tricking him into entering the house, she forces him to marry her beautiful daughter and keeps him imprisoned in the house for a year. When he is allowed to leave, he goes to see his old mistress, who castrates him when she discovers he is married to another. Finally returning to his mother, he acknowledges the love and sacrifice of Aziza, who dies of a broken heart.

Aziz’s journey is characterized by a gradual deprivation of freedom, first by his mistress and then by his wife. The increase in power and influence of women through lust ends in literal emasculation which chimed with eighteenth-century fears which prescribed self-restraint for women. Yet for Aziz to overcome temptation, he must eat and drink before he goes to the pavilion, as he cannot resist the temptation laid before him. When he meets the young woman he will marry, eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse are all she wants from him. Likening him to a rooster puts man’s pleasure on the same level as the animals. During the year Aziz spends with her, he becomes coarse and fat as he does nothing but indulge his desires.

These two stories exemplify the cunning of women along with the purity and innocence of the young. This fed into eighteenth-century ideas that women’s desires needed to be controlled by strict propriety. It also pointed to the vengeance and jealousy of mistresses who were scorned. Elsewhere the tales tell of malevolent spirits such as the jinni who seek to do men harm, of transformations of men into animals as a source of revenge or punishment, highlighting the fantastical or supernatural elements of the tales. This supernatural element, along with the mystery of the Orient, will later be used by Gothic authors such as Beckford and Dacre.