The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear

This is a fun book, whimsically illustrated in a 'Cat in the Hat' style, and is well worth reading, if you like surreal stuff.

For example: "The only certainty is that I was a foundling abandoned in the middle of the ocean. My earliest memory is of being afloat in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, for at first I was very, very small." He is rescued from being sucked down a gigantic whirlpool by a tribe of minipirates - four and five-inch tall beings, with two peg-legs, two hooks for hands, eyepatches and triangular hats, who are the unacknowledged masters of the high seas. When he grows too big for their ship they regretfully abandon him, and he spends a number of weeks crying to entertain an island of hobgoblins. He is later taught to speak - and indeed, not just to speak, but to master all forms of verbal communication - by a couple of talking waves who argue incessantly with one another, then later is rescued in the nick of time from a carnivorous island. This book is relentlessly, unflaggingly inventive and easily matches the flights of fancy in the Phantom Tollbooth and other such works. Needless to say, Bluebear finds himself well-equipped when he enters a lying competition later on in the book. A hundred rounds - also a record, against Nussram Fhakir the Unique, just before the City of Atlantis took off and flew back to its home planet. That's just a small part of what's here - just three or four of Bluebear's 13½ documented lives. Do check this book out.

Yeah, it's supposedly a kid's book, for kids maybe around Phantom Tollbooth age, but it's a very good translation, so even if you want to pretend to be grown-up you can read it to admire the translator's art. A bit like Stanislaw Lem or the Asterix books, the translation work is itself worthy of attention. And the level of surrealism is top-tier.

A treasure trove of imagination. Adventure & nonsense in equal measure, there are shaggy-dog-story stretches but also a lot of fun. Cover does well to reference Adams and Silverstein, I'd add the absurdities of Terry Pratchett's Discworld & Alice in Wonderland to the mix. Beware: certain creatures & scenarios could be nightmare fuel, and being published in 1999 means certain insensitivities crop up. ⚠️ Fatphobia