The Land of Far-Beyond by Enid Blyton

[Janet]

The Land of Far-Beyond by Enid Blyton

 

 

The ‘blurb’

Peter, Anna and Patience set out from the City of Turmoil to the beautiful Land of Far-Beyond. On the way, they meet many extraordinary characters including the Demons of Boredom, Laziness and Sloth, the giant Cruelty and his page-boy, Fright.

 

Peter and his sisters are out of control. Living in the City of Turmoil, a dirty place where the people are cruel and unkind, they spend their day bunking off school and making mischief such as knocking on people’s doors and running away and getting enjoyment from throwing stones at defenceless animals.

 

One day they meet a man called 'Wanderer', who shows kindness to a small dog they’ve been tormenting. The children are intrigued by this stranger and start talking to him. He tells them that they each carry great burdens around with them. When the children ask him to prove it, he makes them clear their minds. They then think happy thoughts and a great pain appears around their hearts. When they open their eyes, they each have a heavy weight upon their backs - their burden, which is all the anger and guilt and bad-behaviour each of them has inside them.

 

Some adults who have gathered to watch insist that they don’t carry burdens like this, and five of them go through the same process and end up with much bigger burdens upon their backs. Wanderer tells them that they must make a perilous journey to The Land of Far-Beyond, which is the only way for them to get rid of their burdens.

 

So begins a big adventure. Along the way they are tempted to ‘stray from the correct path’. Will they make it to The Land of Far-Beyond or not?

 

I first read this when I was about 9 years old. I lived in a small village where there was only one shop that sold books - and in very limited amounts on one of those white spinning round racks like you see in charity shops. I'd read lots of Enid Blyton so bought this, having no real idea of the story's origin. It's a Christian allegory based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress but obviously it's aimed at children so it's very simplistic.

 

A few years ago I came across a copy at a market for 40p and thought I'd like to revisit it. It's the same version I had as a child with illustrations by Horace Knowles so it brought back happy memories for me. Written in 1942, some of the language is obviously quite dated. Whist it is, of course, religious, Blyton manages to retell the story without it sounding either overly preachy or patronising.

 

It's out of print now - there are several copies second-hand on Amazon but prices start from around

Edited March 3, 2009 by Janet

[evildon]

It looks like a good book.

Lets buy it and read t.

thanks for showing this book..

Edited March 3, 2009 by Janet
Edited to remove hidden link