Stories from the Pentamerone

About this book

A girl changes shape to escape danger; kings make foolish promises, and monsters share the landscape with peasants and talking animals. Giambattista Basile's stories are filled with rough humour, sudden cruelty and extravagant magic.

Collected in seventeenth-century Naples, these tales include early versions of stories later familiar through Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Warwick Goble's illustrations add delicate colour to a world whose original temperament is often earthy and unsentimental. The stories move briskly through impossible trials and ingenious deceptions, preserving something of the noise and energy of spoken storytelling.