The fantastic journey of Annis eyes, the rag dolls and the captain

Amy's Eyes , published 1985 by Harper & Row, New York, is Richard Kennedy's best-known work in Germany ; it was published in 1987 under the title The fantastic journey of Annis eyes, the rag dolls and the captain by Ueberreuter Verlag, Austria.

content

In his laudation at the presentation of the Pied Piper Literature Prize of the City of Hameln in 1988, Prof. Dr. Dieter Petzold, Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, summarized the content of the book as follows:

"(...) The heroine Anni lives in an unspecified past in which there are still horses, stagecoaches and sailing ships. Her widowed father abandons her in front of an orphanage, equipped with a loaf of bread and a self-made doll in The first ten years of Annis's life in the orphanage are under the motto “Take what you can get, defend yourself, and the dogs will bite the last one.” Anni wakes her beloved captain's doll with an accidental needle prick in the head unexpectedly to life. (...) The captain, awakened to life, quickly grows into a man, flees the orphanage and, according to his destiny, goes to sea, not without promising to write to his "sister" Anni and to give her later But since his letters are intercepted by an angry, embittered supervisor, Anni is so grieved that she in turn becomes a doll, while she leads a kind of Sleeping Beauty existence hears, though not in unconscious sleep, but as a passive participant in the action, the captain becomes the new protagonist of the story. This changes its character: what follows is an extended fantastic adventure trip, a treasure hunt on a sailing ship manned by soft toys brought to life and pursued by bloodthirsty pirates. (...) "(Documentation on the award ceremony; with the kind permission of the cultural office of the city of Hameln)

criticism

The book received enthusiastic reviews in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Maria Frisè wrote in the FAZ on November 7, 1987, among other things: "(...) 370 pages full of stories, tightly knotted and much intertwined sailor's thread. Read, people, read! In America, not only the children's book connoisseurs were pricked up Richard Kennedy earnestly and enthusiastically praised him, she compared "The Fantastic Journey" with "Tristram Shandy" and the "Neverending Story." Comparisons of this kind always lag. "The Fantastic Journey" is at least much funnier, much more absurd and much more exciting than that illustrious role models. The translation by Sybil Countess Schönfeldt deserves special praise . (...) "