Stephen Mitchell's spiffy, creative, and endearing reworking of the classic Grimm's fairy tale draws from the wellspring of his extraordinary translations of great religious texts. Like Meetings with the Archangel, which he called "a comedy of spirit," this work of imaginative prose is a free-fall into the kind of perennial wisdom that stirs the soul.
A frog with high aspirations sits meditating at an abandoned well in France during the High Renaissance. One of the inexplicable characteristics of the time is articulate animals. The frog falls madly and passionately in love with a beautiful princess who loves her independence. When she drops her golden ball in the well, he retrieves it for her. What happens at court later cannot be revealed for it would spoil the delicious surprises in this world of "once upon a time."
Mitchell's parable about love and transformation is a delight from start to finish. He enchants us with clever asides and light-hearted meditations about beauty and ugliness, desire and aversion, eros and freedom, truth and lies. The Frog Prince will transport you into a realm where you'll experience afresh the marvelous surprises of the soul's thermodynamics.