The Guardian – Cornelia Funke
“I am often asked – always by grown-ups, never by children – why I write fantasy instead of realistic prose. Of course this question raises another one: how do we define reality? Is Shakespeare unrealistic because he makes ghosts and witches take the stage? What do the magical adventures of Harry Potter reveal – quite brilliantly – about British reality; class, racism and the roots of fascism? In my opinion, the reality of this world and our existence in it can only be described as fantastic. The more we learn about our reality, the more we realise that we don’t understand it at all. We have learned to build ourselves better ears and eyes to find out about the universe that contains each of us like a grain of sand. We’re rightfully very proud of our new instruments, but we’ve distanced ourselves from nature.”(more)