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Giambattista Basile (1575-1632) was born to a middle-class family just outside of Naples, Italy. A poet, academic, and court administrator, he is most remembered for collecting the first set of European fairy tales, published by his sister two years after his death. Jack Zipes (foreword) is a preeminent fairy tale scholar. He has written or edited dozens of books, including a complete translation of the first two editions of the Grimm fairy tales, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, published to great success in 2014. A retired professor of German at the University of Minnesota, he lives in Minnesota. Nancy L. Canepa (translator) is an associate professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College. Carmelo Lettere (illustrator) is an Italian artist.
Exhilarating . . . Invaluable . . . Vivid and fascinating . . . The body count is so high that it's lucky our dimwitted heroes and goodhearted fairies always seem to have convenient potions on hand to paste everyone's heads back on. . . . The writing has the manic, crowd-pleasing energy of a work meant to be read aloud. --NPR.org Though [Basile] wrote for a literary elite, the dirt of an oral tradition clings to his telling, rich in legend and slang. --Anthony Lane, The New Yorker What makes The Tale of Tales memorable is twofold: the lunatic imagery used in many of these stories, and the occasionally tart tone taken by its narration. . . . The bizarre details of several of these stories offer much to recommend. --Literary Hub
