[Pop-up Classics 01] • Pinocchio (New York Review Books Classics)

Though one of the best-known books in the world, Pinocchio at the same time remains unknown—linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi’s splendid original. That story is of course, about a puppet who, after many trails, succeeds in becoming a "real boy." Yet it is hardly a sentimental or morally improving tale. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page, a madcap genius hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires, a renegade who in many ways resembles his near contemporary Huck Finn.

Pinocchio the novel, no less than Pinocchio the character, is one of the great inventions of modern literature. A sublime anomaly, the book merges that traditions of the picaresque, of street theater, and of folk and fairy tales into a work that is at once adventure, satire, and a powerful enchantment that anticipates surrealism and magical realism. Throng with memorable character and composed the the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream, Pinocchio is an endlessly fascinating work that is essential equipment for life.

In this new translation by Geoffrey Brock, the prizewinning translator of Cesare Pavese, Pinocchio finally has an English rendering worthy of the inspired original. This edition features an introduction by Umberto Eco and an afterward by Rebecca West.