The Mirror in the Mirror

Book excerpt: “The Mirror in the Mirror” – in the E-Book now also with illustrations by his father Edgar Ende, to whom Michael Ende dedicated this book. It is a fantastic story labyrinth of a very special kind. For the author himself, this work was of great importance: in interviews, he liked to call it his “never-ending story for adult readers.” The reader is taken into a mysterious narrative world, full of bizarre situations and mysterious fates, surreal images and philosophical thoughts. Those who open themselves in amazement to these enigmatic visions and allow themselves to be drawn into the fantastic stories will emerge from Michael Ende’s magic labyrinth with a new perspective. The core question is: What is reflected in a mirror that is reflected in a mirror? If two readers read the same book, they are still not reading the same thing. For both people immerse themselves into the reading. The book becomes a mirror in which the reader is reflected. But in the same way, the reader is also a mirror in which the book is reflected: The mirror in the mirror refers the reader back to himself. The FAZ, one of the major newspapers in Germany, writes that Michael Ende shows with the book “how much darkness, wildness and rawness is inherent in dreams. He does not trivialize. His dreams make reference to reality because in dreams, Cicero wrote, ‘the remnants of those objects roll and tumble about in the souls which we have thought and impelled while awake’.”