Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

'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 The Singing Bone / The Brothers Grimm -- Hansel And Gretel / The Brothers Grimm -- The Children Of Hameln / The Brothers Grimm -- The Sandman / E.t.a. Hoffmann -- Rune Mountain / Ludwig Tieck -- St. Cecilia Or The Power Of Music / Heinrich Von Kleist -- Peter Schlemiel / Adelbert Von Chamisso -- The Marble Statue / Josef Von Eichendorff -- Descent Into The Mines / Heinrich Heine -- My Gmunden / Peter Altenberg -- The Magic Egg / Mynona (aka Salomo Friedlaender) -- A New Kind Of Plaything / Mynona (aka Salomo Friedlaender) -- The Seamstress / Rainer Maria Rilke -- The Island Of Eternal Life / Georg Kaiser -- In The Penal Colony / Franz Kafka -- The Kiss / Robert Walser -- The Blackbird / Robert Musil -- The Lunatic / Georg Heym -- A Conversation Concerning Legs / Alfred Lichtenstein -- The Onion / Kurt Schwitters -- A Raw Recruit / Klabund (aka Alfred Henschke) -- The Time Saver / Ignaz Wrobel (aka Kurt Tucholsky) -- The Tattooed Portrait / Egon Erwin Kisch -- The Experiment Or The Victory Of The Children / Unica Zürn -- The Dandelion / Wolfgang Borchert -- Shadowlight / Paul Celan -- The Secrets Of The Princess Of Kagran / Ingeborg Bachmann -- Conversation / Jürg Laederach. Selected, Translated And Edited By Peter Wortsman. Includes Bibliographical References. Translated From The German. Offers a collection of the haunting German stories from the past 200 years. This title 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; and Kafka's chilling, disturbing satire "In the Penal Colony".