The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende

‘Bastian Balthazar Bux.’

Carl Conrad Coreander.’

‘What kind of things do they yell when they make fun of you?’

‘Oh, all kinds.’ ‘For instance?’

‘Not very clever,’

‘What else?’

‘Screwball, nitwit, bragga...

‘Screwball? Why do they call you that?’ ‘I talk to myself sometimes.’ ‘What kind of things do you say?’ ‘I think up stories. I invent names and words that don’t exist. That kind of thing.’ ‘And you say these things t...

‘What do your parents say a...

‘Father doesn’t say anything. He never says anything. It’s all the same to him.’ ‘And your mother?’ ‘She – she’s gone.’ ...

‘She’s ...

irrevocable,

The Neverending Story

Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place.

satchel

violinist’s

violin

‘Home so soon?’ ‘Yes,’

‘No school today?’

schoolhouse

a big owl, a golden eagle, a fox,

‘I wonder,’

‘what’s in a book while it’s closed. Oh, I know it’s full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story with people I don’t know yet and all kinds of adventures and deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut up in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it’s already there, that’s the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.’

Fantastica,

will-o’-the-wisps

grottoes.

chewers

Fantastican

Blubb.’

Gluckuk.’

night-hob.

Pyornkrachzark

Moldymoor,’

Lake Foamingbroth

Howling Forest.

whish!

stone bicycle

The clock in the belfry struck nine. Reluctantly Bastian’s thoughts turned back to reality. He was glad the Neverending Story had nothing to do with that. He didn’t like books in which dull, cranky writers describe

humdrum

events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn’t stand it when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that. Bastian liked books that were exciting or funny, or that made him dream. Books where made-up characters had marvelous adventures, books that made him imagine all sorts of things. Because one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them. When he told himself stories, he sometimes forgot everything around him and awoke – as though from a dream – only when the story was finished. And this book was just like his own stories! In reading it, he had heard not ...

Down in the classroom they were starting in on nature study. That consisted almost entirely in counting pistils and stamens. Bastian was glad to be up here in his hiding place, where he could rea...

Vooshv...

phoenix

Childlike Empress’s

Childlike Empress

cacophony

Vooshvazool!

racing snail?’

Magnolia Pavilion.

Bastian’s thoughts wandered. Suddenly he remembered the long corridor in the hospital where his mother had been operated on. He and his father had sat waiting for hours outside the operating room. Doctors and nurses hurried this way and that. When his father asked about his wife, the answer was always evasive. No one really seemed to know how she was doing. Finally a bald-headed man in a white smock had come out to them. He looked tired and sad. Much as he regretted it, he said, his efforts had been in vain. He had pressed their hands and mumbled something about ‘heartfelt sympathy.’ After that, everything had changed between Bastian and his father. Not outwardly. Bastian had everything he could have wished for. He had a three-speed bicycle, an electric train, plenty of vitamin pills, fifty-three books, a golden hamster, an aquarium with tropical fish in it, a small camera, six pocketknives, and so forth and so on. But none of all this really meant anything to him. Bastian remembered that his father had often played with him in the past. He had even told him stories. No longer. He couldn’t talk to his father anymore. There was an invisible wall around his father, and no one could get through to him. He never found fault and he never praised. Even when Bastian was put back in school, his father hadn’t said anything. He had only looked at him in his sad, absent way, and Bastian felt that as far as his father was concerned he wasn’t there at all. That was how his father usual...