one of the tales related by Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. In it, a fisherman discovers an ornate trunk, which he sells to the caliph, the ruler of all Islam. When the caliph opens the trunk, he finds the body of a young woman, hacked to pieces. The caliph dispatches his wazir—his chief advisor—to find the murderer, giving the wazir three days to accomplish this task or else face death himself. On the third day, the wazir has failed and is about to be executed when two men appear, both claiming to be the murderer. The story unfolds from there with a series of turns, each more unexpected than the next, made all the more extraordinary when you remember the teller of the tale, Scheherazade, was trying to save herself from beheading by a merciless king. To modern scholars, “The Three Apples” is one of the earliest known examples of a thriller in literature, relying as it did on an unreliable narrator and a multitude of plot twists to enthrall readers.
