The Adventures of Pinocchio

revelatory new edition of the most widely translated Italian book in the world–soon to be a Netflix animated feature film co-directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro and voiced by Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, John Turturro, and Tilda Swinton A Penguin Classic  Carved from a piece of wood by the old carpenter Geppetto, the puppet Pinocchio comes to life and wants nothing more than to be a real boy. But while this beloved character has achieved literary immortality, he is ultimately misunderstood. He has a penchant for lying, to be sure, but it’s when he avoids going to school that he repeatedly gets into trouble, making The Adventures of Pinocchio an unusually timely novel about the importance of education, in our increasingly authoritarian times, to prevent our strings being pulled.   This effervescent new translation captures the antic spirit that makes the mischievous, egotistical, and easily distracted Pinocchio a late nineteenth-century prototype for the likes of Bart Simpson. Featuring copious annotations informed by the translators’ deep knowledge of Italy, it reveals the novel to be not only a subversively entertaining children’s book but also a sophisticated satire reflecting the author’s concern for the social inequality of his time and his belief that duty to others is at the core of our humanity.