This article examines the Arabian Nights subtext of Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki, proposing that the subtext is far more extensive and relevant than previously recognized. This subtext highlights the tension in the book between linear and circular narratives, and the vicious circles Venichka hopes to escape. The Arabian Nights subtext challenges the way we read the book, hinting that Moskva-Petushki is a book that emulates its redemptive subtexts but omits the frame stories that reveal this redemption. In such an interpretation, we see that Venichka is playing the role of the holy fool, or the storyteller Scheherazade, and that his primary audience is not his train companions nor the conductor who calls him Scheherazade, but the reader; it is therefore by his effect on the reader that the book’s success or failure as a redemptive story should be measured.