PUSHKIN CLASSICS - Timeless storytelling from around the globe: Luise has ringlets. Lottie has braids. Apart from that they look the same. When the two girls meet at a summer camp and discover the secret behind their similarity, they decide to switch places. Everything goes to plan until their father meets a young, beautiful woman and things start to unravel...
Erich Kästner, writer, poet and journalist, was born in Dresden in 1899. His first children's book, Emil and the Detectives, was published in 1929 and has since sold millions of copies around the world and been translated into around 60 languages. After the Nazis took power in Germany, Kästner's books were burnt and he was excluded from the writers' guild. He won many awards, including the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960. He died in 1974. Anthea Bell, an acclaimed translator of German and French literature, was born in Suffolk in 1936. An illustrious, award-winning translator, she was best known for her translations of the much-loved Asterix books and the work of Zweig and Sebald. She died in 2018. Walter Trier was born in Prague in 1880. After moving to Berlin, he became an acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator, and Kästner's collaborator on more than a dozen children's books. Forced to emigrate under Nazi rule, he died in 1951 in Ontario, Canada.
© Kaspar Plaas