Mar 23 2023
Bambi, the iconic fawn is this year celebrating a very significant birthday, it being a century since the German imprint Ullstein Verlag first published Bambi: A Life in the Woods. Written by Felix Salten, an Austro-Hungarian, the coming-of-age novel would go on to be banned by the Nazis before eventually winding up in the hands of Walt Disney and becoming the animated children’s film many know and love.
Perhaps the most crucial difference between Salten’s novel and Disney’s film is that the former was aimed at adults, initially appearing as a serialisation in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, before being published as a book the following year.
Many readers of the Salten's original interpret it as not about animals but about Jews or other minority groups. This was also how the Nazi's interpreted it. In 1935, both of Salten’s Bambi novels were banned and burned by the Nazis, who viewed them as Jewish propaganda. Because of this, few first editions of Bambi remain, despite it having been a bestseller. Salten and his wife, unsafe in Austria, fled following the German annexation in 1938, moving to Switzerland where the writer remained for the rest of his life.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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