In the spring of 18..., advised by the chief of his eunuchs, the Shah of Persia, sick with melancholy and vague desires, embarks on a pleasure trip to Vienna. At a ball he becomes infatuated with a beautiful countess and demands to spend a night with her.

The helpful Austrian police officers rush to satisfy his wish, although with a slight variation: it will be Mizzi, a young prostitute, associate of the countess, who will comfort the Shah, who will return to Persia convinced of the sublime refinement of the art of love. in the West. Thus, under the sign of The Thousand and One Nights, the story begins, and then acquires its authentic dimension of a "Viennese novel", a portrait of a naive and cynical, corrupt and dying society. The author moves his characters in a chess game that they are not aware of and that will seal their ruin. A game that at first seems disjointed and casual until it becomes, throughout the novel, an inexorable sliding knot.

The Thousand Second Night, one of Joseph Roth's best novels, is, at the same time, a masterful fable and chronicle of a world trapped in the impossibility of survival, which constitutes the leitmotiv of the author's work.