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Michael Ende has achieved international acclaim as an author of fantasy literature. His success came in 1960 with his first novel, Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (translated as Jim Button and Luke the Engine-Driver, 1963), and reached its c...

The Neverending Story seems destined, by dint of its advertising budget, for financial success. Since, in addition, it is an import from Germany and will therefore automatically be embraced by those who ride the bandwagon of reverse cultural chauvinism, I must confess to a certain initial prejudice, which redoubled when, on reading the first few pages, I found out that this was yet another book about an alienated person who falls into a fantasy universe. Any fantasy enthusiast will probably be able to rattl...

["The Neverending Story"] is a fantasy epic with all the requisite elements of the genre: chimerical creatures, exotic forests and mountains, unpronounceable proper names, a picaresque plot predicated on a Great Quest, magical swords and amulets, chivalric protocol, high melodrama, a virtuous empress, a heroic little fat boy and a moral vision of Manichaean simplicity. The novel is splashed generously with literary color but, as though that weren't enough, it is also printed in alternat...

Alas, it takes more than ballyhoo to make a book worthwhile Just to open ["The Neverending Story"] is to suffer disappointment and be vividly reminded that it began its life in Germany as a child's book, for how can anyone take seriously a book published in colored ink? Worse, the first letter of every chapter is muddily illuminated…. The contents match the packaging. The plot involves a small bookworm of a boy who starts to read a tale about an ever-changing quest through a stra...