Customer Reviews

The Night of Wishes: Or the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A MUST READ for all Michael Ende fans - however it did loose some of its beauty when translated into english - being german there are some things i see in the drawings, others might not catch <i.e. our book critic Marcel Reich Ranitzki <sp> sitting cought in a jar on a shelf> But nontheless a great book for young and old

The two professional reviews Amazon provides hint at the main problem with this book: the translator did not take the opportunity to turn the assault of German puns into a similarly overwhelming experience in English. Rather, you have hints of former puns, and a cute fairy tale with an underlying Al Gore parable even a middle schooler could grasp on the first reading. This book is still worth buying if you like Ende, because it will give you further insights into the lifelong themes he outlined in Momo and The Neverending Story, but when it comes to the translation quality it's as if you're looking at a print of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" so badly blurred you can't tell it's made up of dots. It's still a colorful experience but it's nothing new. Someone who is not already a fan of Ende would be totally justified to throw up his arms and say, "So what's the big deal?"