5/5
To mark the 200th anniversary of the original publication of the first Grimm’s Fairy Tales, best-selling British novelist Philip Pullman has taken on the daunting task of translating and updating versions of these odd and frequently epochal stories, including favourites such as Little Red Riding Hood, alongside lesser-known tales including the bafflingly weird The Riddle.
Everyone knows the story of Cinderella, and the scene in which her foot slips perfectly into the fated slipper, but her wicked stepsisters cutting off their heels and toes in an attempt to become princesses themselves is rarely part of the bedtime story. Crucially, Pullman makes no attempt to modernise the stories, but instead trusts the primal essence of these narratives to provide all of the wonder, magic and revulsion that have made them inescapable for generations.
