Fables of Town and Country

Since I introduced Pierre Coran (pseud. Eugène Delaisse) to my anglophone readers with the collection Fables in a Modern Key (2014), my translation of his Fables à l'air du temps, this whimsical octogenarian celebrated throughout his native Belgium as a preeminent “children’s poet”— though only, in truth, for the most precocious of children!— has imperceptibly grown a year older and added to his already enviable list of literary honors.

I admiringly offer here these Fables of Town and Country— my version of his most recent collection, Fables des villes et des champs—though quite confident that, by time the manuscript goes to press, it will have been succeeded by several others, and probably by another round of literary honors as well.

Coran continues to live in the rural town of Jurbise in the Walloon province of Hainaut, with his actress wife Irène, always finding time for enriching and inspiring travel— and never without productive pen in hand ... Norman R. Shapiro