"The Golden Ass" has been a favourite of the private presses and illustrators since the invention of printing. Apuleius' comic masterpiece originally composed in Latin in the second century AD, traces the hilarious misadventures of a young man a tad too curious about magic for his own good. Hoping to change himself into an owl, he turns into a donkey instead, and in this guise is sold, stolen, or otherwise shunted from one master to the next. Along the way, he sees the underbelly of the sprawling Roman Empire, with its saints and sinners, its venal merchants and greedy priests, until he's transformed back to human form via divine intervention. Not only a story of comic redemption, it is also a self-conscious early example of storytelling that left an indelible mark on later literature - from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" to Boccaccio's "Decameron", and from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Pinocchio".

About the Author
M.D. Usher is professor of Classics at the University of Vermont. Illustrated by T. Motley, an illustrator and cartoonist who teaches cartooning at The School for Visual Arts & Illustration at Pratt Manhattan.


Book Information
ISBN 9781567924183
Author T. Motley
Format Hardback
Page Count 85
Imprint David R. Godine Publisher Inc
Publisher David R. Godine Publisher Inc
Dimensions(mm) 209mm * 163mm * 13mm