The Tale of Tales
Release:
02/09/2016
Runtime:
18h 8m
Unabridged
Quantity:
Exhilarating . . . Invaluable . . . Vivid and fascinating . . . The body count is so high that it’s lucky our dimwitted heroes and goodhearted fairies always seem to have convenient potions on hand to paste everyone’s heads back on. . . . The writing has the manic, crowd-pleasing energy of a work meant to be read aloud.
NPR.org
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Salma Hayek, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, and Vincent Cassel: a rollicking, bawdy, fantastical cycle of 50 fairy tales told by 10 storytellers over 5 days
Before the Brothers Grimm, before Charles Perrault, before Hans Christian Andersen, there was Giambattista Basile, a seventeenth-century poet from Naples, Italy, whom the Grimms credit with recording the first national collection of fairy tales. The Tale of Tales opens with Princess Zoza, unable to laugh no matter how funny the joke. Her father, the king, attempts to make her smile; instead he leaves her cursed, whereupon the prince she is destined to marry is snatched up by another woman. To expose this impostor and win back her rightful husband, Zoza contrives a storytelling extravaganza: fifty fairy tales to be told by ten sharp-tongued women (including Zoza in disguise) over five days.
Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome—and featuring a childless queen who devours the heart of a sea monster cooked by a virgin, and who then gives birth the very next day; a lecherous king aroused by the voice of a woman, whom he courts unaware of her physical grotesqueness; and a king who raises a flea to monstrous size on his own blood, sparking a contest in which an ogre vies with men for the hand of the king’s daughter—The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.
Read by Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Paul Boehmer, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Will Damron, Susan Denaker, Kirby Heyborne, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, John Lee, Rebecca Lowman, Jorjeana Marie, Kathleen McInerney, Arthur Morey, Kirsten Potter, Fred Sanders, Tara Sands, Simon Vance, and Karen White.
Before the Brothers Grimm, before Charles Perrault, before Hans Christian Andersen, there was Giambattista Basile, a seventeenth-century poet from Naples, Italy, whom the Grimms credit with recording the first national collection of fairy tales. The Tale of Tales opens with Princess Zoza, unable to laugh no matter how funny the joke. Her father, the king, attempts to make her smile; instead he leaves her cursed, whereupon the prince she is destined to marry is snatched up by another woman. To expose this impostor and win back her rightful husband, Zoza contrives a storytelling extravaganza: fifty fairy tales to be told by ten sharp-tongued women (including Zoza in disguise) over five days.
Funny and scary, romantic and gruesome—and featuring a childless queen who devours the heart of a sea monster cooked by a virgin, and who then gives birth the very next day; a lecherous king aroused by the voice of a woman, whom he courts unaware of her physical grotesqueness; and a king who raises a flea to monstrous size on his own blood, sparking a contest in which an ogre vies with men for the hand of the king’s daughter—The Tale of Tales is a fairy-tale treasure that prefigures Game of Thrones and other touchstones of worldwide fantasy literature.
Read by Dorothy Dillingham Blue, Paul Boehmer, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, Will Damron, Susan Denaker, Kirby Heyborne, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, John Lee, Rebecca Lowman, Jorjeana Marie, Kathleen McInerney, Arthur Morey, Kirsten Potter, Fred Sanders, Tara Sands, Simon Vance, and Karen White.
Release:
2016-02-09
Runtime:
18h 8m
Format:
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780451482099
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Praise