Fairy Tales at Fifty


Book Description

Nirip on the cusp of fifty is not happy with his life. His father is an ogre and his mother a witch. He is not happy with that either. His sort of half-sister is a sort of half-man. A really close relative turns out to be a serial killer. He is not happy sleeping with his chauffeur's wife. Neither is she. Then, for his amusement, his father arranges a cricket match between rival dacoit teams in which some of the players are shot dead. Who could be happy in such circumstances? Days before his fiftieth birthday, with Nirip still wondering whether he should go ahead and have himself kidnapped so that he can make some money, he discovers, most unexpectedly, that he is not the biological child of his parents. Witty, macabre, sad, cruel, unforgivingly insightful, Fairy Tales at Fifty is part adventure tale, part nightmare, part acid trip---and throughout a triumph of fiction.




English, August


Book Description

Agastya Sen, known to friends by the English name August, is a child of the Indian elite. His friends go to Yale and Harvard. August himself has just landed a prize government job. The job takes him to Madna, “the hottest town in India,” deep in the sticks. There he finds himself surrounded by incompetents and cranks, time wasters, bureaucrats, and crazies. What to do? Get stoned, shirk work, collapse in the heat, stare at the ceiling. Dealing with the locals turns out to be a lot easier for August than living with himself. English, August is a comic masterpiece from contemporary India. Like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Catcher in the Rye, it is both an inspired and hilarious satire and a timeless story of self-discovery.




Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm


Book Description

*National Bestseller* The acclaimed retelling of the world’s best-loved fairy tales by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass and The Book of Dust—now in paperback, and with 3 new tales! Two centuries ago, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first volume of fairy tales. Since then, such stories as “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Rapunzel,” and “Hansel and Gretel” have become deeply woven into the Western imagination. Now Philip Pullman, the New York Times bestselling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, makes us fall in love all over again with the immortal tales of the Brothers Grimm. Here are Pullman’s fifty favorites—a wide-ranging selection that includes the most popular stories as well as lesser-known treasures like “The Three Snake Leaves,” “Godfather Death,” and “The Girl with No Hands”—alongside his personal commentaries on each story’s sources, variations, and everlasting appeal. Suffused with romance and villainy, danger and wit, Pullman’s beguiling retellings will cast a spell on readers of all ages. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.




Fairy Tales from the Far North


Book Description

Thirty-seven fairy tales from Norway.




My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me


Book Description

The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.




The Macmillan Fairy Tales Collection


Book Description

A beautiful hardback treasury, containing over fifty fairy tales from around the world, introduced by award-winning author Michael Morpurgo. The perfect gift for fairy tale lovers of all ages. This glorious collection contains much-loved favourites from Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, such as The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel, alongside lesser known fairy tales, such as the Chinese story of Bayberry, who rescues his sister, Little Red, from a devious dragon. Bringing together amazing stories from across the world, there are tales of witches from Russia, tree ghosts from India, magical moon spirits from Japan and many more. Fully illustrated throughout, with beautiful colour and line-work images from iconic Golden Age illustrators, including Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane and Warwick Goble. A sumptuous 480 page gift hardback, complete with a foiled cut-through cover, gold foiled edges and a ribbon marker, The Macmillan Fairy Tales Collection is a book to share and treasure. Macmillan has been publishing children’s books for over 175 years. Drawing on Macmillan’s rich historical archive, The Macmillan Fairy Tales Collection contains stories and artwork from treasuries first published in the 1800s and early 1900s. Plus an informative section about some of the authors and artists behind those original collections.




50 Fairy Things to Make and Do


Book Description

A pack that contains 50 creative activities which engross, entertain and engage children - even through long school holidays and wet weekends.




The Uses of Enchantment


Book Description

Winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award "A charming book about enchantment, a profound book about fairy tales."—John Updike, The New York Times Book Review Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development. Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sindbad to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in our greatest human task, that of finding meaning for one’s life.




In the Ever After


Book Description

'A wonderful book that can engage the wise person and the child within every adult who reads it. Wisdom and truth are present in each carefully and delightfully chosen fairy tale, recognizable in some inarticulated intuitive way.'?Jean Shinoda Bolen, author of Goddesses in Everywoman Do adults ever live happily ever after? Interpreted in light of contemporary research on mid-life and aging, these rare fairy tales reveal a deep folk wisdom about the psychological tasks encountered in the second half of life. Collected from around the world, these stories offer an engaging exploration into the problems of adulthood and aging. Allan B. Chinen, M.D., is a psychiatrist practicing in San Francisco and the author of numerous papers on adult development and aging. He received his medical degree at Stanford University, and his psychiatric training at the University of California, San Francisco, where is presently on the clinical faculty.




Fairy Tales and Fables


Book Description

An illustrated anthology of well-known fairy tales and Aesop's fables.