Archipelago Books and Community Bookstore to Host Reading from SELECTED TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, 6/6

Join Archipelago Books and Community Bookstore for a reading of the Selected Tales of The Brothers Grimm, selected, edited, and translated by Peter Wortsman, and a conversation about fairy tales and their relevance to contemporary life with Peter Wortsman and New Yorker staff writer Joan Acocella. The reading will take place on Thursday, June 6 at 7 p.m. at the Community Bookstore, 143 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. Subway: B/Q at Seventh Ave.

Jacob Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were court librarians, linguists, scholars, translators, and writers. They collected stories told by peasants and villagers and published them in written form, forming the foundation of the most enduring tales today.

Peter Wortsman is the recipient of the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year in the Solas Awards Competition and the author of A Modern Way to Die: Small Stories and Microtalesand the recently published memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray, among other works. His translations from the German include books by Robert Musil, Heinrich Heine, Peter Altenberg, and Heinrich Von Kleist.

Joan Acocella is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of six books of non-fiction. The latest is 28 Artists and 2 Saints(Pantheon), a collection of cultural criticism.

Selected Tales of The Brothers Grimm
Translated from the German by Peter Wortsman

A new edition of the beloved tales of The Brothers Grimm selected and translated by Peter Wortsman and drawn from the 1857 edition of the German original, the last edition reviewed and approved by the Brothers in their lifetime. These original enigmatic narratives have been sanitized by Disney et al for modern consumption; this new edition restores their sting and vigor-in Wortsman's words, a return to "a tincture of concentrated man-eating ogre and ground hag tooth, diluted in blood, sweat and tears, as a potent vaccine against the crippling effects of fear and fury." These fortifying imaginative vaccines are accompanied by twenty-four full-color illustrations by Haitian artists, including Edouard Duval-Carrié, Pascale Monnin, and Frankétienne. Edwidge Danticat observes that many Haitian painters bring "forth another canvas beneath the one we see": these works' imaginative scope, vitality, and evocation of the unconscious inspire a powerful conversation between the two traditions, opening new windows onto the classic tales.

Learn more @ archipelagobooks.org.