The Golden Pot:and Other Tales Of The Uncanny

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“I could list plausible comparisons all day and night, but The Golden Pot is simply unlike anything else I have ever read.” — Justin Taylor, The Washington Post

Macabre and fantastical, Hoffmann’s wildly imaginative tales offer an unflinching view of human nature and sing clearer than ever in a masterful new translation

Whether a surrealist exploration of the anxieties surrounding automation, or a mystery concerning a goldsmith, missing jewels, and a spate of murders, each tale in this collection reveals the complexities of human desire and fear.

Hoffman, whose most famous work is “The Nutcracker,” is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe. Hoffman’s massive influence qualifies him as the godfather of the German Romantic Movement which led to the horror genre.

The macabre, fantastical nature of his subject matter inspired a broad swath of culture, with two of the longer stories in this collection “The Sandman” and “The Automaton” influencing Philip K. Dick’s original inspiration for Blade Runner. The murder mystery “Mademoiselle de Scudéry” is perhaps one of the earliest prototypes of the detective genre story.

Music and madness flow through E.T.A. Hoffmann’s phantasmagoric stories. The ringing of crystal bells heralds the arrival of a beguiling snake, and a student’s descent into lunacy; a young man abandons his betrothed for a woman who plays the piano skillfully but seems worryingly wooden; a counselor’s daughter must choose between singing and her life.

Peter Wortsman’s masterful new translation allows Hoffmann’s distinct and influential style to shine, while breathing new life into stories that seem both familiar and uncanny.

About the Author

Robert Musil (1880–1942), born in Vienna, was trained as a mathematician, behavioral psychologist, engineer, and philosopher. During WWI, he served as an officer in the Austrian Army on the Italian front. He died exiled and impoverished in Switzerland in 1942. Author of The Man Without Qualities, Young Törless, and Five Women, Musil is one of the towering pillars of twentieth-century modernism.

Recipient of the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year, Peter Wortsman is the author of A Modern Way to Die: Small Stories and Microtales, the plays The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words, the recent memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin: A Rhapsody in Gray, and the forthcoming novel Cold Earth Wanderers. His translations from the German include Heinrich Heine’s Travel Pictures, Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Peter Altenberg’s Telegrams of the Soul, and Tales of the German Imagination: From The Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann, published by Penguin Classics.

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