Kassandra and the Wolf

Margarita Karapanou's Kassandra and the Wolf was first published in 1976, and went on to become a contemporary classic in Greece, receive international acclaim, and establish its 28-year-old author as an intensely original new talent, who garnered comparisons to Proust and Schulz. Six-year-old Kassandra is given a doll: "I put her to sleep in her box, but first I cut off her legs and arms so she'd fit," she tells us, "Later, I cut her head off too, so she wouldn't be so heavy. Now I love her very much." Kassandra is an unforgettable narrator, a perfect, brutal guide to childhood as we've never seen it, a journey that passes through the looking glass but finds the darkest corners of the real world.

This edition brings Kassandra and the Wolf back into print at last, a tour de force and, as Karapanou liked to call it, a scary monster of a book.