When Ramsay Wood retells a story he makes a proper job of it: not for him those pale imitations of a nobel original which is what your average reteller palms off on his readers.

A beautiful book full of mirth and human interest and unsentimental wisdom and vigorous writing.

Jewels of story-writing, narrated with the psychological insight, subtle rhythms and changes of pace of a veteran. Playful, allusive, richly ambiguous, teasing in their narrative complexity and yet deceptively clear in their resolutions: immersing oneself in the world of this trickster is to savour the pleasure of reading at its most intense. . . .What...

Kalila wa Dimnais, like The Arabian Nights , an engine room of stories – and stories within stories. It is also one of the undoubted masterpieces of world literature. Its tales mingle entertainment and wisdom. The limpidity of Ramsay Wood’s prose echoes that of the Indian original.

Ramsay Wood has cast his selection in the form of a novel . . . .his prose is sophisticated (“Your megalomania appears to be approaching clinical proportions.”)…. vivid, rapid and often witty….The material is not particularly exotic – but then, nor is morality. “Classics”, after all, are supposed to transcend boundaries.

Wood has produced a vigorous modern version of Bidpai… overlaid with a racy personal idiom, a witty mixture of archaic grandiloquence, modern slang, and (in some passages) the jargon of sociology, television and local government… his version will certainly be much more attractive to modern readers than the older translations, with their drier narratives and...

Wood’s superb stories should be set alongside Italo Calvino’s retelling of the folk tales of Italy. No higher praise is necessary.

This fresh creation follows the more than two thousand year old precedent of adapting, collating and arranging the material in any way that suits present purposes. It is contemporary, racy, vigorous, full of zest. It is also very funny. I defy anyone to sit down with it and not finish it at a sitting. Ramsay...

Ramsay Wood follows his originals closely, and slips with skill in and out of stories as closely interfolded as the petals of a rose.

Sans frontière linguistique ni culturelle, ces fables ignorent aussi celles du temps. Au sein du recueil, les paradoxes temporels abondent. Des lettres très antiques, enfermées dans une série de coffres par le roi Houschenk autrefois, s’adressent aux souverains de l’avenir. Elles renferment des conseils dont le sens ne s’éclaire qu’à mesure, parfois avec un très...

This cycle of ancient Indian and Persian animal fables, largely unknown, unavailable, and inaccessible until now, has been retold by Ramsay Wood in a lively modern prose that is earthy and wry, with flashes of insight that verge on wisdom. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the masterpieces of world literature – or...

An intricately woven web of some of the world’s oldest and greatest stories, sweetly and humourously retold, and begging to be read aloud to a new generation of listeners.