Tales of the German Imagination from ..., Peter Wortsman
Tales of the German Imagination from ..., Peter Wortsman
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Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann

Author: Peter Wortsman, Various

Narrator: Jonathan Keeble

Unabridged: 13 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/25/2021


Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Jonathan Keeble. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Peter Wortsman.

'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered'

Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years. Ranging from the Romantics of the early nineteenth century to works of contemporary fiction, it includes Hoffmann's hallucinatory portrait of terror and insanity 'The Sandman'; Chamisso's influential black masterpiece 'Peter Schlemiel', where a man barters his own shadow; Kafka's chilling, disturbing satire 'In the Penal Colony'; the Dadaist surrealism of Kurt Schwitters' 'The Onion'; and Bachmann's modern fairy tale 'The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran'. Macabre, dreamlike and expressing deep unconscious fears, these stories are also spiked with unsettling humour, showing stylistic daring as well as giving insight into the darkest recesses of the human condition.

Peter Wortsman's powerful translations are accompanied by brief overviews of the lives of each author, and an introduction discussing the notion of 'angst' and the stories' place in the context of German history.

Translated, selected and edited with an introduction by Peter Wortsman

© Peter Wortsman 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gabe on January 25, 2022

Bought this when i was in Berlin because i love Germany, I love madness and i Love the macabre! Some lovely grotesque (and funny!) stuff in here. Very fun to watch stories of bewitching evolve into stories of insanity, and especially interesting to look at all these works in the shadow of the Brothe......more

Goodreads review by Tim on November 11, 2015

This Penguin Classics collection seems to be part of a relatively recent commitment by the publishers to the fantasy tale and (perhaps deliberately) competes with the slightly more 'high art' and European-focused Daedalus series. The tales are derived from three periods. The first is the German roman......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on August 11, 2020

My favourite stories in the collection: The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann Peter Schlemiel by Adelbert von Chamisso In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka......more

Goodreads review by Alana on December 02, 2022

mans who selected and translated this went hard in the mf paint no lie......more

Goodreads review by Chythan on August 01, 2023

Loved some. Others not so much. Intriguingly dark, nevertheless.......more


Quotes

Appealing

All twenty-five tales make absolutely riveting reading and are almost all suitable for reading to children as bedtime stories. As for the adults - within the pages of Tales of the German Imagination is a treasury of delicious, old fashioned story-telling

A solid collection of classic stories ... a labor of love