Hansel & Gretel : a nightmare in eight scenes

Simon Armitage turns Hansel & Gretel into a darkly glittering fairy tale for grown-ups.

In vivid and trenchant language, he puts a contemporary spin on the tale we know from the Brothers Grimm.

Here is a twenty-first century story, whose preoccupations are poverty and hunger, war and flight, a shifting dystopian landscape where nothing is quite as it seems. Text and illustration fuse beautifully to summon a nightmarish vision that nonetheless contains humour and humanity and the possibility of a more hopeful future to come.