The fantastic Mr. Fox
The fantastic Mr. Fox (original title: Fantastic Mr Fox ) is a children's book by the Norwegian - Welsh writer Roald Dahl , which was published in 1970. It is about three farmers who, with increasingly excessive means, hunt a fox who is always more sophisticated than them.
The first German translation by Charles Schüddekopf was published in 1979. In 2009 a film adaptation of the same name by Wes Anderson was released .
action
Mr. Fox lives with his wife and four children near the farms of the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean, from whose stables he regularly steals poultry. One day the farmers decide to put an end to the theft by shooting the fox. However, Mr. Fox keeps escaping them. Even when they ambush him right in front of his den, they only hit his tail while Mr. Fox survives. The farmers then decide to destroy the burrow. They start digging it up with spades; the fox family, being woken from their sleep, also begins to dig and is faster than the farmers. The farmers then open excavators, but this also prevents them from catching up with the foxes. They therefore decide to lay siege to the area to starve the foxes. The foxes dig until they are exhausted and then try to rearrange themselves. But the children in particular soon suffer from a lack of food until Mr. Fox comes up with the saving idea: while the farmers camp over the burrow, Mr. Fox and his children break into the stables and cellars of the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean from below and steal some of their best supplies. On the way they meet the badger family they are friends with, who also suffered from the siege. Mr. Fox invites the badger, rabbit and weasel families to a feast. In a speech he praised the community of animals, which are superior to humans in terms of cunning, and proclaimed that they can all live underground thanks to the newly discovered sources of supply, as they prefer to do anyway. While the animals are partying, Boggis, Bunce and Bean still wait in vain for the fox to appear.
expenditure
The first edition was published in the UK by George Allen & Unwin and in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. The first edition was illustrated by Donald Chaffin , and the first paperback edition, published by Penguin in 1974 , was illustrated by Jill Bennett . Quentin Blake's famous illustrations first appeared in a 1996 edition.
The first German edition was published in 1979 by Rowohlt Verlag in a translation by Charles Schüddekopf with illustrations by Irmtraut Teltau ( ISBN 3-498-01232-0 ). In the meantime, numerous other editions have appeared, including a paperback edition with illustrations by Quentin Blake ( ISBN 978-3-499-21411-0 ).
Audio books
Two audio book versions were published in English: one read by Roald Dahl himself (first published in 1978, reissued as a CD by HarperCollins in 2009 , ISBN 0-06-053627-6 ) and another read by Martin Jarvis (published by Puffin 2007, ISBN 978 -0-14-180787-4 ).
A German reading by Christian Berkel was published by Hörverlag in 2010 ( ISBN 978-3-86717-432-9 ).
Adaptations
Movie
2009 appeared Stop Motion - animated film from Wes Anderson with the German title The Fantastic Mr. Fox . In English, George Clooney speaks the main character, Mr. Fox.
music
The opera Fantastic Mr. Fox with music by Tobias Picker and a libretto by Donald Sturrock was premiered on December 9, 1998 by the Los Angeles Opera in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion .