Hi, I'm Lava Burton and this is Lava Burton Reads.

In every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

In Oya there's been a really rich vein of storytelling historically in the retellings

and reimagining of folklore and fairy tales.

Whether it's American folklore or Japanese folk tales or the Grims fairy tales that are

really familiar to us now.

Today's story is really an interesting and fun perspective on a classic German tale,

written by the author Michael Cunningham.

Mr. Cunningham is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours and he's also written

the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh in Blood, Specimen Days by Nightfall

and The Snow Queen.

This story is part of his collection A Wild Swan and Other Tales which retells the

story of the Ten Soldier, the Monkeys Paw and more.

I think that fairy tales are so rich for the retelling partly because we become so

accustomed to them.

We know the characters, we know the end of the story, we know the phrasing, we enjoy

the familiarity so it's really delightful and fun for me to interrogate them and poke

holes in them.

Michael Cunningham in this story asks, why?

Why would this character do this?

Why do we historically consider this character the hero?

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