Peter Rühmkorf – Meeting up in Kenilworth. A fairy tale

fiction, cats

184pp

Are there ghosts in England? Are there ever! Jam McDamn, senior curator at Kenilworth, never lets a guided tour go by without drawing attention to Kenilworth's resident ghost. Whether his cat Minnie believes in ghosts is less clearcut.

The ghost, grown more and more doddery with each passing century but provoked beyond endurance by McDamn, rouses himself one dull November evening to work the miracle and make the magic spell come true: »Ginger puss, you will now become a human and live henceforth as a young maid, and you, McDamn, will be transformed into a tomcat and roam abroad for the rest of your life.«

How will these unequal creatures cope? Will they ever find each other again? And which of them - the transmuted tom or the feline maiden - will prove able to adjust to their new life?

Rights sold

Latvia – Apgads Mansards

audio book - Jumbo
paperback - Insel

previously published (rights reverted):
Taiwan (Chinese complex) - Asian Culture

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Reviews

»Rühmkorf’s fairy tales are spun of anarchic, poetic yarn, full of breezing sentences, racy adventures, and bold disenchantments; they are traditional yet they mimic tradition. (...) Rühmkorf has read and studied the ›merry science‹ of fairy tales for years. As a reader, you can tell that here is someone who knows his subject well, and this is precisely why he is so delightfully able to continue and at the same to subvert this ancient art. He can play by the rules of the genre, or thwart them. And he can make the words dance (...) Reading Rühmkorf is pure aesthetic delight, the most sophisticated seduction, and a reminder of what a glorious instrument language can be.«
Gabriele von Arnim, Die Welt

»Rühmkorf’s most brilliant fairy story, exuberant with ideas and puns, a wonderfully intricate literary fairy-tale in the tradition of Hoffmanns and Tieck.«
Freitag

»Rühmkorf was never disheartened, whatever obstacles crossed his path. He constantly broke new ground, introduced new and spirited poetic patterns, handled literary theory with ease. Then in the late 1970s – after his attempts on political drama flopped, leaving eight years of hard work to no avail - Rühmkorf was looking for a new audience beyond his lyrical work and landed a direct hit with his ingenious fairy and ghost tale AUF WIEDERSEHEN IN KENILWORTH. His first prose work was so brazenly successful that it made all similar attempts by rival writers look like colportage (...) Here was an iridescent cat piece of brilliant linguistic virtuosity, a tale of unique quality like E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Tom-Cat Murr, a work of outstanding reflection written in a musical, most detailed and precise language that went far beyond the mediocrity of the Hobbits, Momos and Neverending Stories hitherto embraced by millions of readers. In his tenderly surreal and contrast-seeking adventure, Rühmkorf managed to keep the delicate balance between free will, hindrance and subtlety, spectacularly sweeping from the arena the more loud-mouthed examples of fantastic literature. Kenilworth came like a bolt from the blue and directly entered the international treasure chest of fairy tales.«
Frankfurter Rundschau

About the author

Peter Rühmkorf (1929-2008) was the author of an extensive lyrical as well as essayistic opus that has received numerous prizes and literary awards. Peter Rühmkorf ranks among the most prominent German writers who have shaped the literary scene in post-war Germany with his consice but artictic use of speech in his poetic works, and his essay-like works of prose marked by the rhythm of the language.

Honors & Awards (selection)

Member of the Gruppe 47 (Group 47)
Member of the PEN Association
Member of the Freie Akademie der Künste (Free Academy of Arts) in Hamburg, the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy of Language and Poetry) in Darmstadt, and the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin

Hugo Jakobi Award
Erich Kästner Award
Annette von Droste Hülshoff Award
Literature Award of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen
Arno Schmidt Award
Heinrich Heine Award of the GDR
Georg Büchner Award
Justinus Kerner Award
SWF Bestselling List Award
Hasenclever Award of the City of Aachen

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