The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

Description

With a new introduction by Jack Zipes 'A great writer . . . a burlesque artist of genius' Salman Rushdie With her wryly subversive and exuberant take on Perrault's classic fairy tales, Angela Carter conjures up a world of resourceful women, black-hearted villains, desperate predicaments, wily stratagems and fantastical transformations. Here nothing is as it seems - in 'Cinderella' charm and a powerful patron prove more useful than beauty; in 'Bluebeard' a brazen wife outwits her murderous husband; in 'Little Red Riding Hood' smooth pelts hide the most dangerous wolves of all; and in 'Sleeping Beauty' we learn that long engagements aren't always the best. By turns playful, frank, cruel and unnerving, these stories bristle with worldly common sense, earthy humour and gothic imagination. 'Her writing is pyrotechnic' Observer

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.