These 27 world-famous fairy tales have inspired countless adaptations in many languages and all public media and have, for millions of people, become an integral part of childhood. Included are such favorites as "Hansel and Gretel," "The Brave Little Tailor," "Cinderella," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Snow White" as well as less familiar ones: "The Danced-Out Shoes," "The Golden Bird," "The Six Swans," "Mother Holle," and "Straw, Coal and Bean." Stanley Appelbaum provides excellent English translations on pages facing the original German, allowing students to read some of...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Prague hosted a cosmopolitan culture whose literary scene abounded in experimental writers. Two of the city's natives are featured in this dual-language volume: Franz Kafka, whose fiction is synonymous with the anguish of modern life; and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose stories unfold in the same transcendent lyricism as his verse.
Twelve of Kafka's stories from the compilation Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) appear here, along with two tales from Ein Hungerkunstler (A Hunger Artist). Rilke's stories include -Die Weise von...