The Cloak of Dreams

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2011: Top 25 Books "Except among a few film and music scholars, Balazs is barely remembered, and only four books from the mountain of his works--novels, stories, poetry, plays, puppet plays, screenplays, libretti, political articles, and film criticism--have ever been translated into English. But he was an archetypal modernist, a type that is now nearly extinct: the man who seemed to know everyone, do everything, and write everything... Unlike others, [Balazs] did not believe that the movies would mean the end of stories and novels, and it is not surprising that he wrote The Cloak of Dreams at the same time that he wrote his first screenplay. In the present moment, when fiction has yet again been declared dead, these deliberately anachronistic, pseudo-Oriental, and completely delightful tales are further examples of the perennial human need for imaginative narrative told in words."--Eliot Weinberger, New York Review of Books "Personally, I found Zipes' introduction--roughly a third of this slim volume--the most interesting part of the book. Zipes provides a fascinating story of a complicated man, buffeted by his place in history, benefitting and suffering from the tumultuous times in which he lived."--Heidi Anne Heiner, SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog "[A] highly informative introduction to the present work by its translator, the university professor and fairy-tale specialist Jack Zipes, who has clearly moved beyond his speciality and gained great insight into Hungary's pre-1919 circles of radical artists and social critics, of which both Balazs and Lukacs were members. He explains how the writing of this collection of Chinese-style tales was not something out of the ordinary on the part of Balazs, but rather dovetailed quite neatly with his search for meaning in life (and death), his belief in the power and imagery of folk tales and his attraction, albeit not conversion, to Taoism."--Bob Dent, Budapest Times "Brought out in the Oddly Modern Fairy Tales series, this lovely volume is as wonderful to hold and behold as it is to read... The tales reflect Balazs's growing interest in communism and Taoism and, as Zipes notes, Balazs's 'profound personal concerns about friendship, alienation, poetry, transformation, and transcendence.'"--Choice "This is a very interesting and unusual book and will be of interest to a variety of readers."--James H. Grayson, Folklore