Pinocchio

Though one of the best-known books in the world,Pinocchioat the same time remains unknowncertainly in America, where it is linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi's splendid original. That storyimprovised on a weekly basis over the course of two years for publication in a newspaperis about, of course, a puppet who succeeds after many trials and tribulations in becoming a "real" boy, and is hardly the sentimental and morally improving tale it has been taken for. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page (you might compare him to his close contemporary Huck Finn), a madcap genius, hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires. It is his unabashedness, his unwillingness to give up on anything he wants, that drives him on and delights us. AndPinocchiothe book, like Pinocchio the character, is one of the great inventions of world literature, a sublime anomaly, merging the traditions of the picaresque, of the commedia dell'arte, and of the fairy tale into a singular book that is at once adventure, comedy, and irreducible conundrum, one that anticipates the surrealism and magical realism that when it was written still lay far in the future. Thronged with memorable charactersthe Blue Fairy, the Fox and the Dog, and Fire Eaterand composed with the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream,Pinocchiois a masterpiece of satire, fantasy, and sheer wonder that is endlessly absorbing, amusing, and surprising: essential equipment for life. In this new translation by Geoffrey Brock, the prizewinning translator of Cesare Pavese and Umberto Eco,Pinocchiofinally has an English rendering worthy of the inspired original.