Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm Paperback - 2013

Excerpt

The Tale of the Juniper Tree

It happened long, long ago, more than two thousand years gone by. There was a rich man who had a beautiful and God-fearing wife, and they loved each other very much. But they had no children, much as they badly wanted them. And the woman prayed so hard day and night, but still she had no children, not a one. Now in the yard, in front of their house, stood a juniper tree. One day in winter the woman stood beneath it, peeling herself an apple, and as she peeled she cut her finger, and the blood dripped into the snow.

Media reviews

The reason that most people value fairy tales, I would say, is that they do not detain us with hope but simply validate what is. Even people who have never known hunger, let alone a murderous stepmother, still have a sense—from dreams, from books, from news broadcasts—of utter blackness, the erasure of safety and comfort and trust. Fairy tales tell us that such knowledge, or fear, is not fantastic but realistic. …  The Grimm tales still invoke nature, more than God, as life’s driving force, and nature is not kind. —Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

Everyone should possess and know Grimm’s Fairy Tales–one of the great books of the world. —Richard Adams, The New York Times Book Review

...this one book–other than the Bible–that has truly made Western man. —P. L. Travers, The New Republic

Frankétienne¢s work can speak to the most intellectual person in the society as well as the most humble. A very good kind of genius. —Edwidge Danticat

Duval-Carrié¢s large-scale paintings burst off The wall . . . bustling with pattern, landscape, sparkle, and mythos rooted in Haitian Voodou . . . [They] have The technical polish and scope to make a splash at any contemporary art fair. —Boston Globe

Citations

• New York Review of Books, 07/09/2015, Page 65