{"product_id":"the-adventures-of-simplicius-simplicissimus-isbn-9780241309865","title":"The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first great German novel - an extraordinary recreation of the horrors of the Thirty Years War, written by a veteran of the conflict\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst published in 1668, \u003ci\u003eSimplicissimus\u003c\/i\u003e tells the picaresque, brilliantly described adventures of a boy swept up in the Thirty Years War and the terrible things that he experiences. Some of it is realistic, some fantastical but the overall effect is an unmatched picture of Europe torn apart by an endless, sadistic, futile war from which nobody can escape.\u003ci\u003e The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus\u003c\/i\u003e was rediscovered in twentieth-century Germany where the book's grim message as a story of war in all of its horror and absurdity resonated and the book is now established as one of the essential works of German literature.\u003cb\u003eHans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen\u003c\/b\u003e (1621-1676) was born in the Wetterau town of Gelnhausen, an area devastated by the Thirty Years' War. Late in life, Grimmelshausen wrote \u003ci\u003eSimplicius Simplicissimus\u003c\/i\u003e, which became an immediate and overwhelming success, initiating the German novel tradition. It was widely imitated and existed in many versions and languages. Very little is known of Grimmelhausen's life and it is hard to know how much of his novel is based on his own experiences and how much on tales he had heard of the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJ.A. Underwood\u003c\/b\u003e is a distinguished translator of German. For Penguin Classics he has also translated Walter Benjamin's \u003ci\u003eOne-Way Street and Other Writings\u003c\/i\u003e and Sigmund Freud's \u003ci\u003eInterpreting Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKevin Cramer \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century\u003c\/i\u003e. He is associate professor of history at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.","brand":"Penguin Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302752735461,"sku":"NP9780241309865","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780241309865.jpg?v=1767738013","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-adventures-of-simplicius-simplicissimus-isbn-9780241309865","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}