Shadow Talk: Twenty-Five New Fairy Tales by Robert Kelly

As C. S. Lewis aptly reminds us: “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” And here they are: twenty-five new fairy tales for readers of all ages by a master fabulist and poet, accompanied by an equal number of original illustrations by a captivating artist, Emma Polyakov. These tales possess such alluring titles as “The Fox and the Other Side,” “The Priest’s Peculiar Wife,” “The Boy in the Camel,” “The Leper’s Touch,” and “The Rainbow.” They employ suitably beguiling entities as well: spectral foxes, a telepathic ape and antelope, shadows that speak, an odd djinn, a puzzled king, an umbrella-loving serpent, protean elves, and other visions of the ultimate reality just beyond sight.

"Kelly offers up a guileful collection of inventive variations on familiar narrative premises. The seeming transparence of his prose can be devilishly deceptive . . . Pen and ink drawings by Emma Polyakov, suggestive and artfully composed, are perfectly in tune with the stories, which confidently inhabit a believable realm of fantasy and danger. This is impressive and delightful."--Publishers Weekly

“After an inexplicable absence, how delicious to return to the fairy tale, that realm ruled by allurement, and discover a wealth of wonders: a rainbow that assures arousal, a boy who inhabits a camel, a butterfly shepherd who is also a cat! Prepare to be enchanted!”— Rikki Ducornet, author of Brightfellow and Trafik

“Shadow Talk is full of deft, seemingly playful little fictions that quietly and covertly work their way under your skin. These twenty-five fairy tales bring Calvino’s notion of lightness to the fairy tale genre. What results is something of a reinvention of the form that only Robert Kelly could manage.”​— Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World