The 13 Clocks

By James Thurber
Introduction by Neil Gaiman
Illustrations by Marc Simont

Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn't go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile, and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales.

So begins James Thurber's sublimely revamped fairy tale, The 13 Clocks, in which a wicked Duke who imagines he has killed time, and the Duke's beautiful niece, for whom time seems to have run out, both meet their match, courtesy of an enterprising and very handsome prince in disguise. Readers young and old will take pleasure in this tale of love forestalled but ultimately fulfilled, admiring its upstanding hero ("He yearned to find in a far land the princess of his dreams, singing as he went, and possibly slaying a dragon here and there".) and unapologetic villain ("We all have flaws," the Duke said. "Mine is being wicked".), while wondering at the enigmatic Golux, the mysterious stranger whose unpredictable interventions speed the story to its necessarily happy end.

Read the introduction (PDF)

Reviews

The great New Yorker humorist James Thurber wrote a few children's books, the best of which may be The 13 Clocks, a 1950 tale of a wicked duke who thinks he has stopped time. Newly reissued, with an intro by Neil Gaiman — who calls it 'probably the best book in the world'— Clocks is the equal of any modern kid classic. By the time he wrote The 13 Clocks, Thurber was too blind to provide his own usual scratchy but vivid illustrations, so he enlisted his friend Marc Simont to do the drawings. Simont provided beautifully cartoonish yet subtle mini-paintings that convey Clocks' varying moods of gloom, menace, surprise, and joy.
— Entertainment Weekly

If you like The Princess Bride you're going to like [The 13 Clocks].
— Daniel Pinkwater, Weekend Edition, NPR

There are spys, monsters, betrayals, hair's-breadth escapes, spells to be broken and all the usual accouterments, but Thurber gives the proceedings his own particular deadpan spin...It all makes for a rousing concoction of adventure, humor and satire that defies any conventional classification.
— Los Angeles Times

The 13 Clocks is one of the cleverest [fairytales] that any modern writer has been able to tell...there is no living author who moves about in fairyland with such wit and easy familiarity.
— Time

Rich with ogres and oligarchs, riddles and wit. What distinguishes it is not just quixotic imagination but Thurber's inimitable delight in language. The stories beg to be read aloud... Thurber captivates the ear and captures the heart.
— Newsweek

Also see:

The Wonderful O By James Thurber Illustrations by Marc Simont A thoroughly uproarious Thurberian experiment with language and a warning to those who would try to tame it. Two pirates conquer an island and attempt to purge it of the odious letter O. Cnfusin reigns, and chas—until the islanders decide to get their vowel back.

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