The bride princess

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The bride princess (original title: The Princess Bride ) is the title of a 1973 book by William Goldman , in which he pretends not to have written the book himself, but only to have shortened and edited. The original has the subtitle S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and noble adventures . The book is a modern, comedic fairy tale bordering on parody . The book was made into a film in 1987, in German with the changed title Die Braut des Prinzen .

content

The content revolves around the fictional book S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and noble adventures . At the beginning Goldman tells in autobiographical form of his first alleged contact with the book as a ten-year-old boy who was completely uninterested in reading. Then it is told how Goldman shortens the story for his son to the version to be read below.

This abridged version of the book is the actual plot, a fairy tale with a prince , princess, faith healer and fighters, in which Goldman repeatedly speaks out in small comments and explains which passages in the text he deleted and for what reason.

Basically, the plot coincides with that of the film , so that a repeated description is dispensed with here. Due to the - sometimes biting - comments that Goldman keeps adding, the book's view of the "romantic love story" between Buttercup and Westley is considerably more pessimistic. The book ends with a (preliminary) happy ending, but the prognosis that Goldman makes for his heroes is anything but rosy.

Continuation: Buttercup's Baby

Some new editions of the novel (including the German edition from 2003 referenced below) contain the first chapter of the novel Butterblumes Baby , which is also supposed to be written by S. Morgenstern and in which the plot is continued. In it, Waverly, the child of Westley and Buttercup, is kidnapped on behalf of Prince Humperdinck. Goldman opens this chapter with a (fictional) statement that the translation of the full version of Stephen King's Florinese work should have been written. King had given Goldman the translation of the first chapter out of friendliness, despite legal difficulties with the heirs of S. Morgenstern.

In fact, so far (December 2008) there are no further chapters of a sequel.

filming

In the film adaptation of The Prince's Bride by Rob Reiner , Peter Falk reads the book to his grandson as a grandfather. In the film, however, the satirizing text passages in which Goldman explains why he made cuts here are missing.

Audio book

There is also a German audio book in which Goldman's entire original text is read aloud. Bela B. reads Goldman's comments and Jochen Malmsheimer reads the fictional Morgenstern text.

literature