The Fairy Tale of the World Book

This is not a fairy tale in the usual sense. There are no princesses, no golden eggs, no happy endings. A brooding portrait of a solitary postapocalyptic existence, The Fairy Tale of the World is nonetheless compelling.

            The story was originally conceived by a brilliant young German writer, Georg Büchner, who died tragically at the age of twenty-three. His dark vision reflects the social injustice of his time.

            Award-winning Swiss author Jürg Amann has adapted The Fairy Tale of the World from a scene in Büchner’s Woyzeck, a moving play about the effects of poverty.

            Internationally acclaimed artist Käthi Bhend has stunningly and surprisingly interpreted Amman’s lyrical language and bleak imagery. Together they have created a book that offers not only Buchner’s dark vision but also a promise of innocence and hope in a dark, despairing world.

Publishers Weekly

Bhend's intricately beautiful illustrations cannot lift this story out of its unrelenting despair. Based on an episode in the 19th-century German writer Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck, it describes the journey of a child who finds the earth deserted and the beauty of the heavens a delusion. As Amann describes the boy's circumstances, they are almost comically bleak--"Everyone had died; no one was left in the world"--and his exploration of the moon and sun fruitless. "hen he got there, he found that the moon was only a piece of rotten wood... whose rottenness glowed green in the dark night." But in contrast, Bhend's (In My Dreams I Can Fly) moon is an entrancing sphere of braided blue branches that floats alone in a black void; the boy climbs through the tangle toward a bird concealed at its heart. It's a remarkable vision, and her other spreads are no less inventive and are equally at odds with the hopelessness of the text. The publisher's age range should be heeded; this is not a book for young children. Ages 12–up. (Nov.)