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The Fairy Tellers cover art

The Fairy Tellers

By: Nicholas Jubber
Narrated by: Esther Wane, Nicholas Jubber
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Summary

The surprising origins and people behind the world's most influential magical tales: the people who told and re-shaped them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them and were in turn formed by them.

Fairy tales are not just fairy tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them and the cultures that formed them. 

While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories - people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them, we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.

Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.

From North Africa and Siberia, this audiobook illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilisation and the 'Eastern' cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long-lost fairy-tellers.

©2022 Nicholas Jubber (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

What listeners say about The Fairy Tellers

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A must for lovers of tales… oral and written

Jubber takes you on a journey that stops at well known posts like The Brothers Grimm while introducing us to lesser known tellers such as Somadeva. Making the familiar new and the unfamiliar intriguing and a must know. Story time just got more interesting!

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Interesting and well performed by the author.

Performances by the author and Esther Wane are easy on the ear, they both bring these old tales to life. Thankyou!

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