Featured: Insel-Bücherei

To Hermann Hesse, trees are symbols that coalesce with memories, symbols of evanescence and rebirth, but also of »all growth, all libidinal, natural life, all insouciance and proliferous...

Sanna and Konrad, the children of a cobbler, set out on the morning of December 24th to bring Christmas presents to their grandparents in the neighbouring mountain village. The grandmother urges...

Bookseller and antiques dealer Giacomo is a recluse living in a quiet alley in Barcelona. His sole love are books. He is intoxicated by the smell of the paper, the covers, the gilded letters and...

A long table made from solid wood, floorboards, benches along the walls, wood cladding and a tiled stove, hosts who know their guests and who give them a feeling of comfort – that is the soul of the German Gasthaus, a type of inn or tavern. This is a place where sociable companionship is important no matter what happens in the outside world.

Erwin Seitz introduces...

Next to olives, figs, grapes and dates, the pomegranate belongs to the earliest fruit to be cultivated by humankind. Until today, it is surrounded by mysteries. Was the »forbidden apple« with...

»When the earth had just been created and the ground was still very soft, there were neither valleys nor hills nor mountains. Only giants existed; with mighty steps they walked across the land.« Ancient sagas and legends from Greece, India, the Near and Far East and other parts of the world tell us the stories of how our stars came into being. Of the girl who married the grizzly...

Little Havelman is lying in his cot and can’t come to rest. He wants his mother to drive him around, but she has already gone to sleep in her four-poster bed. That’s when he decides to take...

»Going to Carus«: that is how the gynaecologist said goodbye to his two children when he set off for the Carl Gustav Carus Medical Academy each day. The man who gave his name to the institution...

The physician John Dolittle lives in the small town of Puddleby-on-the Marsh, and he is not on good terms with the local people. Things are entirely different with the animals, he is able to help...

H. C. Andersen’s Fairy Tales Told for Children have been translated into more than 80 languages to date and belong among the finest and most popular collections of fairy tales world...