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Selected Tales
Selected Tales
Apr 19, 2025 1:37 AM

Author:The Brothers Grimm,David Luke,David Luke,David Luke

Selected Tales

Selected Tales contains some of the most timeless and enchanting folk and fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, translated with an introduction by David Luke in Penguin Classics.

These folktales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are among the most memorable stories in European culture - conjuring up a world of spells and bewitchment, outwitted villains and cruel stepmothers, animal bridegrooms and enchanted princesses. Tales such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'Little Red Cape' and 'The Robber Bridegroom' depict the dangers lurking in dark forests, and others, including 'Briar-Rose' and 'Snow White' show young beauties punished by unforgiving sorceresses. Other tales include 'Thickasathumb', which portrays a childless young couple whose wish for a baby is granted in an unexpected way, while 'The Frog King' tells of a rash promise made by a haughty princess to share her bed with a frog, and a fortune is won in 'The Blue Lamp', when a soldier gains a kingdom with the help of a magic lamp.

David Luke's vibrant translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing the key themes of the tales and the literary background of the Brothers Grimm. This edition also includes new further reading and a chronology, with notes and a glossary.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) are nowadays simply known as 'the brothers Grimm'. Both brothers were state-appointed librarians in Kassel, and later members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Berlin, where Frederick William IV of Prussia had invited them to settle. Two of Germany's greatest scholars, Jacob is regarded as the founder of the scientific study of the German language, and with his brother Wilhelm initiated the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a dictionary of all words in modern High German since 1450.

If you enjoyed the Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, you might like Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, also available in Penguin Classics.

Reviews

It rarely happens that literature offers a more profound insight into politics and culture than does news reporting. Amos Oz has performed this rare service

—— Times Literary Supplement

Amos Oz makes the desert a place of jackals and miracles... A strong, beautiful, disturbing book

—— New York Times

A born storyteller

—— Jewish Chronicle

Virginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realisation of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition

—— New York Times

Virginia Woolf was one of the great innovators of that decade of literary Modernism, the 1920s. Novels such as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse showed how experimental writing could reshape our sense of ordinary life. Taking unremarkable materials - preparations for a genteel party, a day on a bourgeois family holiday - they trace the flow of associations and ideas that we call "consciousness"

—— Guardian

In The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Danilo Kiš offers a vision that expands the domain of life at the expense of that of death. These stories present that vision with a journalist's precision, with a taxidermist's tactile knowledge of era and realm, with the tenacity of a true son of the century

—— Joseph Brodsky

Intense and exotic, his mysteries hint at unspeakable secrets that remain forever beyond the story-teller's grasp

—— Boyd Tonkin

This translation, by Michael Henry Heim, is superb

—— Independent

The Encyclopedia of the Dead is a book of wonders, product of a vivid imagination that is yet a model of narrative restraint

—— RTE

This ambitious and magical novel is made all the more remarkable by its muscular prose redolent with atmosphere.

—— Daily Mail

Sara Taylor has a completely natural, unforced feel for language and voice: a remarkable debut.

—— Adam Thorpe

A precocious talent.

—— Irish Examiner

Ambiguous gender roles, grotesque situations and the whiff of decay hanging over The Shore – brilliantly imagined through the stench of chicken factories – lend a southern Gothic feel to the writing. There are sections of brutal realism, magic realism and speculative fiction. Other dystopias come to mind, notably David Mitchell’s time-hopping epic Cloud Atlas, but also Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and its themes of sexually transmitted plagues and subjugation of women.

—— Irish Times

A haunting and staggering debut novel, this is a multi-layered exploration of redneck Virginia through the eyes of its women.

—— Evening Standard magazine

An impressive debut novel

—— Sunday Times

An original new voice in fiction

—— Big Issue

Lyrical writing and quietly tragic storytelling

—— Huffington Post

A really promising debut . . . the beauty of it is astounding . . . enchanting.

—— Tiffany Jenkins

[A] savage yet hyper-readable debut … [a] harrowing, high-octane novel.

—— Observer, 'Paperback of the Week'

This is not a novel for the faint-hearted but dare to read it for the sinuous fluency of the writing.

—— Maureen Duffy

This is an outstanding book, one that makes the reader pause and take stock. It is unsettling, challenging and yet beautiful – made all the more so by the author’s pared back language and careful evocation of the land, marshes, oyster beds and crabs, and the miseries and small joys of island life … this is an extraordinary beginning to a literary career.

—— The Literary Shed

A superb first novel . . . [it is] a significant achievement to produce a book of this quality . . . [there is] a wonderful sense of place.

—— Graham Farmelo

Reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and just as ambitious

—— Stylist

An impressive debut.

—— The Writes of Women

Already on the longlist for the Baileys Prize, this is an island story told in daisy-chain sequence, a series of succinct vignettes that come together as a vivid portrait of the Shore itself, until you can almost smell the salt air and the stench of slaughtered chicken.

—— For Books Sake

Some extraordinary images . . . a wonderful first novel.

—— Michael Arditti

Taylor’s prose is dreamy and surprisingly playful.

—— S magazine (Sunday Express)

A wonderful read.

—— Interzone

Exuberant, magical and incredibly ambitious, but Sara Taylor pulls it off with style.

—— The Bookbag

Taylor shows a special affinity with the lives of women that makes for a powerful debut

—— Independent on Sunday
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