Insel-Bücherei

He is considered the great sufferer of modern literature, a brooding existential author. But that is just one side of Franz Kafka; few know that he was struck by legendary fits of laughter, loved slapstick, and integrated many comedic elements in his texts. His friend Max Brod reported how Kafka had laughed so hard while reading the first chapter of The Trial aloud that »he...

Together with his newfound companions, Pig meets even more friends, a crocodile, gnomes, a giant and many more. But Pig still feels very lonely and abandoned. But is that really the case? Of course not!

In catchy rhymes, Jörg Hilbert talks about loneliness. But also about the fact that you are not always alone when you think you are.

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...

All beginnings are difficult. This little bird also knows a thing or two about that. The big day has arrived, it’s time to leave the nest. But that’s pretty high! Will it be OK? Just...

»It was most beautiful when snow had fallen shortly before and remained with moderate frost and bright weather«. Christmas market in Old Berlin: Little Minchen and her mother, despite...

»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...

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...

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...

Baron Münchhausen is a historical figure – he might not have written down his incredible adventures, »singular travels, campaigns and voyages« himself, but they became a bestseller shortly after...

»Jimi the Polar Bear was lying in the arms of the sleeping child, his paws crossed. It was 1 very young polar pear the size of a puppy and he hardly dared to breathe so as not to wake the child. The child was dreaming that Jimi was lying in its arms and told him 1 story.«

Thus begins the short poetic story of Jimi the Polar Bear and the child Emma, told by the great Austrian poet...

The kitten is actually a tomcat and is called Mirror because his fur is so marvellously shiny. But when his benefactress dies, things start to go downhill for him. Since it’s now on him to find...

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...

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...

»My childhood days I think of now, / A long-forgotten fairy tale sound awakens: / Bells ring and on silver shoes / The Christkind walks though the white night.« It’s mainly childhood...

At the age of 40, in the middle of World War I, Hermann Hesse started to paint. To him it was an »outlet, so as to be able to bear life even in the direst of times« and to gain some distance from...

Hans Traxler, who grew up in a Bohemian village in the 1930s, had a childhood just like in the olden days, with a mother who played the church organ, a father who was the commander of the local Gendarmerie and who at Ascension Day could be found behind the baldachin with the monstrance and his older brothers who showed him how to catch trout with the butterfly net. But this idyllic time came...

A summer month in a stately country residence in East Sussex. Sounds marvelous. When a married couple is invited by their English friends to look after the house and the dog while they go on holiday, they are overjoyed at the prospect. Swimming in Pevensey Bay, excursions with the Bluebell Express, visits to the Tate Gallery, hiking in the Downs – the two make great plans. But they have not...

Self-determination instead of conformation, obstinacy instead of submission – this is the common thread that weaves through all of Hermann Hesse’s works. To him, every person’s disposition...

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...

»I have always had a connection with butterflies and other fleeting and ephemeral beauties, while I have never succeeded in maintaining permanent, committed and so-called solid relationships,«...

It all starts with the old nursery rhyme: »There once was a man who had a sponge ...«. But then the rhyme and the plot take on a life of their own, and the man with the child's...