Book description
ETA Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King may be familiar to
many, having served as the inspiration for Tchaikovsky's famous ballet.
However, the ballet was based on a French retelling of the story, and
Hoffmann's German original is rarely translated in its entirety. This
edition of the complete German classic, in a new translation by the
eminent translator Anthea Bell, displays the full range of the author's
quirky power of invention. It is published here alongside another
lesser-known tale, The Strange Child, in which a young brother and
sister meet an unusual playmate in the woods and have to deal with a
sinister new schoolmaster.
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E T A Hoffmann was a German author of fantasy and horror, a jurist,
composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject
and hero of Offenbach's famous opera The Tales of Hoffmann and is one of
the major authors of the Romantic movement.
Anthea Bell is an acclaimed translator of German and French
literature, and is known for her translations of W G Sebald's
Austerlitz, for which she won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in
2002, as well as the muchloved Asterix books. She recently
translated Hoffmann's The Nutcracker for Pushkin Press. Other previous
Pushkin translations include Zweig's Burning Secret, for which she
won the SchlegelTieck Prize in 2010.
