The back jackets of much of Thomas Bernhard's English-language translations are burdened by such qualifications as "near genius" or "second only to Kafka and Beckett."  This, of course, is no small praise: there is no shame in being second to Kafka or Beckett; there is no shame in being a "ne

The collected folk and fairy tales of writers and linguists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are in most cases now better known for their recent – and largely prettified – adaptations than for the brothers' renditions of them; thus, the gruesomeness of some of their most famous stories –