MORTIMER, Chapman - Father Goose - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

Book still readable - Wrapper poorish - It belonged to the Sapper Club before.   >>>    I looked for this book because it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1951 and I could find absolutely nothing about the book's contents and only a sentence or two about the author.  Needless to say, I felt challenged....   - The book jacket has the following on the front flyleaf:   Father Goose said someone, will puzzle the average reader, but you, whose eyes are glued to this page, are far from average.  Father Goose wont puzzle you.  He will entertain you, if you will let him, answer your natural questions as you go along, and take you to India; a country you will not recognize whether you have been there or not.  But Father Goose is no travellers tale, and no politicians either, for it is all true.  In it, among other sensible things, you will find a man meddling with love and getting hanged for it in the most natural way in the world; and you will find that India, like Islington, is stuffed with strange people and with all the other ingredients of a good story.  And here, too, besides a good story, is storytelling of unhampered invention.  With Father Goose you may laugh or be as deep as you please.  In it everything can talk, and when required to, does so convincingly and truthfully.  Here stones weep, just as you may doyou who are not a stone and have so much more room in your head for imagination.  Here, perhaps, you will find something to rememberunless you are, after all, only an average reader.    (Annette on Goodreads)