Irish Wonderful Tales

"Irish Wonderful Tales" — ten crazy magical adventures in the now unattainable reality of gods, kings, and heroes; a collection of ancient legends, first recorded in the Middle Ages and reinterpreted in the early last century by James Stephens (1880–1950), an expert and popularizer of the medieval Irish language tradition, who carefully preserved the gem-like scatter of oral colloquial speech that the emerald hills heard in time immemorial, while vividly and brilliantly rendering these phantasmagorias into a language more understandable to us today.
James Stephens' style — that of a poet, author of the humorous philosophical novels "The Pot of Gold" and "Half-Gods", and a BBC broadcaster — is unmistakable: ironic, rich, and incredibly generous, it is interwoven with the boundless Irish history and the music of language. Stephens himself is more like a member of the "Joyce cohort", a bright bold modernist, a keen observant satirist. However, his adherence to the epic tradition of his native land and strong national sentiment predetermined his truly unique place in Irish and world literature of the 20th century.