Emil and the Detectives (1929)

אותה כריכה בכל השפות ובכל הזמנים. מה יכול להיות יו​תר סמל מזה של קלסיקה אמיתית. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1985547.html

Classic children's books, which I had first read many years ago long before I got to know and love Berlin, the city in which it is set. It's a very basic but charming story of the young and smart and good getting together to defeat the old and evil, and has not lost its charm - so popular that it was the only book by Kästner to escape the book-burning of May 1933. I had forgotten the scene-setting dramatis personæ at the beginning, and also Kästner's insertion of himself into the story at the end. Great fun.

I'm sorry to say that I wasn't convinced by W. Martin's new translation, supposed to appeal to the young reader of the twenty-first century. Berlin and Germany are foreign places anyway, and the 1920s a far-off time; why bother to rebrand our hero, Emil Tischbein as "Emil Tabletoes"? It seems if anything more jarring; surely kids even in these unenlightened times can cope with the notion that people in a book set in Germany might have German-sounding names? And rather than try to translate street names, I would have preferred a map showing where they all are (the Nollendorfplatz where the story climaxes is now in Berlin's gay district; that is optional information for the younger reader).

Having said that, there is a very nice introduction to this edition by Maurice Sendak, who had read an early (and possibly better) translation at the age of 10 in 1938. ( )

In the last couple of years I have made a habit of finding and rereading books that I loved as a child. This is one that held up nicely, and was fun to read again, some forty years later!

The story is well reviewed elsewhere, I just wanted to add my thumbs up to the stack of reviews! ( )

This is an excellent childrens book which I loved as a child and even as an adult find entertaining. ( )

This was one of my favourite books as a child, and I still get a little frisson whenever I visit Berlin and pass through Bahnhof Zoo. Berlin seemed a remote and exotic place to me in the 1960s (I'd never been further east than Dortmund), but Kästner chose to set his story there for the opposite reason: he wanted a prosaic, familiar setting. In his introduction (which is meant to be read as part of the story) he explains that he'd originally started writing an exciting adventure story set in the South Seas, but had to give up after three chapters when he realised that he didn't know how many legs a whale has. On the advice of a waiter, he started again with a setting rather closer to home. We should probably be thankful that they didn't have Wikipedia in those days!

Still charming, exciting and funny eighty years on, and definitely recommended for any child. But don't be surprised if they demand a motor horn for their next birthday! ( )