Letter for the King

'A true page-turner' Sunday Times

The bestselling classic fantasy novel, acclaimed as a Times, Sunday Times and Metro Book of the Year.

A young messenger. A secret mission. A kingdom in peril.

When Tiuri answers a desperate call for help, he finds himself on a dangerous errand that could cost him his life. He must deliver a secret letter to the king who lives across the Great Mountains - and the future of the entire realm depends on his message.

It means abandoning his home, breaking all the rules and leaving everything behind - even the knighthood he has dreamed of for so long. He must trust no one. He must keep his true identity a secret. Above all, he must never reveal what is in the letter.

The fate of the kingdom rests on him.

Part of the new Pushkin Children's Classics series of thrilling, magical and inspiring stories from around the world, which young readers will return to time and again.

Translated by Laura Watkinson.

Tonke Dragt was born in Jakarta in 1930 and spent most of her childhood in Indonesia. Her family moved to the Netherlands after the war and, after studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Dragt became an art teacher. She published her first book in 1961, followed a year later by The Letter for the King, which won the Children's Book of the Year award and has been translated into sixteen languages. Dragt was awarded the State Prize for Youth Literature in 1976 and was knighted in 2001. She died in 2024.

Laura Watkinson is a full-time translator from Dutch, Italian and German. She has translated many titles for Pushkin Children's Books, including Jan Terlouw's Winter in Wartime, Tonke Dragt's The Letter for the King and Annet Schaap's Lampie. She lives in Amsterdam.