Book Description
With full-color illustrations by contemporary Haitian artists, Pascale Monnin, Jean-Claude Legagneur, Hector Hyppolite, Frankétienne, Gesner Abelard, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Marithou Dupoux, Lionel St. Eloi, Lyonel Laurenceau, Jeanne-Elie-Joseph, Gregory Vorbe, Jean-René Jérôme, and AM Maurice.
A new edition of the beloved tales of the Brothers Grimm selected and translated by Peter Wortsman and drawn from the 1857 edition of the German original, the last edition reviewed and approved by the Brothers in their lifetime. These original enigmatic narratives have been sanitized by Disney et al for modern consumption; this new edition restores their sting and vigor—in Wortsman’s words-, a return to “a tincture of concentrated man-eating ogre and ground hag tooth, diluted in blood, sweat and tears, as a potent vaccine against the crippling effects of fear and fury.” These fortifying imaginative vaccines are accompanied by twenty-four full-color illustrations by Haitian artists, including Edouard Duval-Carrié, Pascale Monnin, and Frankétienne. Edwidge Danticat observes that many Haitian painters bring “forth another canvas beneath the one we see”: these works’ imaginative scope, vitality, and evocation of the unconscious inspire a powerful conversation between the two traditions, opening new windows onto the classic tales.
Among the few indispensable, common-property books upon which Western culture can be founded . . . it should be, first and foremost, an educational ‘must’ for adults.
— W. H. Auden, The New York Times
The 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 society as well as the most humble. A very generous kind of genius.
— Edwidge Danticat
Lionel St. Eloi, Marithou Dupoux, and Pascale Monnin are some of the most promising Haitian artists today.
— Michel Philippe Lerebours, art historian
Duval-Carrié's large-scale paintings burst off the wall ... bustling with pattern, landscape, sparkle, and mythos rooted in Haitian Voodou.
— Boston Globe
Wortsman feels no obligation to feign a universal fairy-tale style. In the thirty-three stories he has chosen from the Grimms’ 200, the characters are vigorously American. They are “smart and savvy” enough to “high-tail it” when in danger. A shoemaker hearing a magic bird tells his wife: “Honey, why don’t you come out and get a load of this bird here, boy can it ever sing!” In a jokey anachronism, the brave little tailor sews a “logo” on his belt.
— The TLS
The translator and fiction writer Peter Wortsman places this story [The Singing Bone] toward the start of the admirable Archipelago Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm and follows it with [...] You can hear the translator's dark glee under the bird's warbling...
— The New York Review of Books
