Author:Hans Christian Andersen
'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.
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 ExaminerMacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have.
—— New StatesmanHis prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts.
—— ObserverBeautifully 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.
—— GuardianMacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry.
—— IndependentMacLaverty'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 TelegraphMacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous writer… who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy.
—— Sunday TelegraphExpert, elegant, mature and passionate.
—— ScotsmanCompelling tales of family dramas in troubled times.
—— HeraldCharacters 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 TimesBitter-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 ReviewThe 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 SupplementAll the customary satisfactions of Burnside's writing – anomie, menace, flashes of violence and cruelty, hallucination and snow – but multiplied.
—— Sunday TelegraphEven Burnside’s most routine stories have beauty and intelligence. He is never less than something like brilliant.
—— Daily TelegraphA tremendous collection from a writer working at the full tilt of his gifts.
—— Kevin Barry , Ormskirk Advertiser