The Salzburg Tales

By Christina Stead

A group of visitors to the Salzburg Festival, brought together by chance, decides to mark time by telling tales. Their fantasies, legends, tragedies, jokes and parodies come together as The Salzburg Tales.

Dazzling in their richness and vitality, the tales are grounded in Christina Stead’s belief that 'the story is magical … what is best about the short story [is] it is real life for everyone; and everyone can tell one'. Originally published eighty years ago, these are thoroughly modern stories that invite comparison with Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The Salzburg Tales are published here with a new introduction by Margaret Harris, Challis Professor of English Literature Emerita at the University of Sydney, and literary executor for Christina Stead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780522869552

Christina Stead

Christina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.

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