Search for your favourite author or book

Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus: Black Classics

ISBN 
9780241309865
Format 
Paperback
Recommended Price 
R345.00
Published 
October 2018
About the book: 
First published in 1668, Simplicissimus tells the picaresque, brilliantly described adventures of a boy swept up in the Thirty Years War and the terrible things that he experiences.  Some of it is realistic, some fantastical but the overall effect is an unmatched picture of Europe torn apart by an endless, sadistic, futile war from which nobody can escape.
 
Simplicissimus was rediscovered in 20th century Germany where the book's grim message resonated and the book is now established as one of the essential works of German literature.
 
As Thomas Mann wrote: 'It is a story of the most basic kind of grandeur - gaudy, wild, raw, amusing, rollicking and ragged, boiling with life, on intimate terms with death and evil - but in the end, contrite and fully tired of a world wasting itself in blood, pillage and lust, but immortal in the miserable spendour of its sins.'

Others also viewed

Troy has fallen and the Greek victors are primed to return home, loaded with spoils. All they...
The Estancia is the story of a young boy growing up in the upper classes of the Argentine in the...
The dynamics are simple in the Wolf family. They eat you if you let them.   Joe Wolf has...