ETA Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King may be familiar to many, having served as the inspiration for Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet. However, the ballet was based on a French retelling of the story, and Hoffmann’s German original is rarely translated in its entirety.

This edition of the complete German classic, in a new translation by the eminent translator Anthea Bell, displays the full range of the author’s quirky power of invention. It is published here alongside another lesser-known tale, The Strange Child, in which a young brother and sister meet an unusual playmate in the woods and have to deal with a sinister new schoolmaster.

Deliciously dark, endlessly imaginative and funny, Hoffmann’s stories still enthrall children and adults alike to this day.

About the Author

ETA Hoffmann was a German author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He is the subject and hero of Offenbach’s famous opera The Tales of Hoffmann and is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.

Anthea Bell is a freelance translator from German and French, specializing in fiction. She has won a number of translation awards in the UK, the USA and Europe, including for her most recent translation for Pushkin Press, Stefan Zweig’s Burning Secret.

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