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The Tinderbox
The Tinderbox
Oct 21, 2024 8:45 AM

Author:Hans Christian Andersen

The Tinderbox

'There sat the dog with eyes as big as mill wheels'

Though criticised for their anarchic immorality when first published, Hans Christian Andersen's tales made him an international star, taken to the hearts of children and adults for their beauty, sorrow and strangeness. Included here are 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier' and 'Big Klaus and Little Klaus'.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). Andersen's Fairy Tales is available in Penguin Classics.

Reviews

Not since J.D. Salinger's For Esme With Love and Squalor have I enjoyed so much a collection of stories. I mean pleasure – real pleasure.

—— Paul Durcan , The Cork Examiner

MacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have.

—— New Statesman

His prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts.

—— Observer

Beautifully constructed, minutely observed, filled with the poetry of longing, told with an economy and simplicity which makes their small tragedies even more powerful and moving… MacLaverty has created an imagined Ulster which can stand side by side with Joyce's Dublin. Long may he continue.

—— Guardian

MacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry.

—— Independent

MacLaverty's jaunty, light prose just skips over it all: here a turn of phrase, there a modest observation that lays a whole scene open. The effect is, as one of the characters says, "beyond rubies''.

—— Daily Telegraph

MacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous writer… who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy.

—— Sunday Telegraph

Expert, elegant, mature and passionate.

—— Scotsman

Compelling tales of family dramas in troubled times.

—— Herald

Characters all but leap off the page with believability in these marvellous stories of life (and death) in Belfast. Funny...and forlorn, they are triumphs of exactness – Joyce and Chekhov come to mind – in which time, place and personality are caught with unshowy authority and not a word seems wasted.

—— Peter Kemp , The Sunday Times

Bitter-sweetness is the mood of many of these stories. MacLaverty is a generous and sympathetic writer, one who is capable of celebrating joy and happiness, while remaining aware that life often brings more disappointments than rewards.

—— Scotsman (Web)

A masterpiece of wit and elegance.

—— Elspeth Barker , Literary Review

The author charts the various stages of life with engaging curiosity and earthy compassion... The publishers, Jonathan Cape, have done a fine job with this handsome and substantial collection.

—— Keith Hopper , Times Literary Supplement

All the customary satisfactions of Burnside's writing – anomie, menace, flashes of violence and cruelty, hallucination and snow – but multiplied.

—— Sunday Telegraph

Even Burnside’s most routine stories have beauty and intelligence. He is never less than something like brilliant.

—— Daily Telegraph

A tremendous collection from a writer working at the full tilt of his gifts.

—— Kevin Barry , Ormskirk Advertiser
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