Angel Classics Andersen, H/Binding, P(tr): A Story from the Dunes: and other stories

As in "The Ice Virgin", Andersen takes us into new territory - for an adult readership. The translator is a leading expert on Scandinavian literature. The title story is one of Andersen's later narratives, combining the immediacy of the fairy tales with a complexity of construction as intricate as any in 19th-century fiction. Paul Binding is the first English translator to recognise this story's true nature, placing it beside "The Ice Virgin" (also in Angel Classics) at the summit of the classic European novella tradition. "A Story from the Dunes" narrates the life of the son of a high-born Spanish couple born literally out of shipwreck, who grows up to all intents and purposes Danish among the seafaring folk of the Jutland peninsula, knowing nothing of his origins, and whose adult life pursues a downward path until he attains, tragically, a state of grace.

The shorter tales in this selection vary in mood, but all carry Andersen's characteristic whimsy, light but deadly serious: the social/political satire "Everything in its Right Place", the mischievous "What One Can Think Of", about a would-be writer who can't think of anything to write about, and one of Andersen's very last stories, the elegiac "What Old Johanne Told".