Sultan and Tosspot, narrated in ten chapters, each of which could equally be read as a story in itself, describes the unusual friendship between two people who couldn’t possibly be more different. The Sultan spends his whole life doing nothing on top of a mountain of embroidered cushions, each of them a love-token from one of his ‘hundred or so’ wives. His servant Tosspot sits at the foot of this mountain and uses a winch to haul the Sultan either up or down as need be. Unfortunately, he proves to be somewhat unskilled in the task, and is forever dropping the Sultan on his well-upholstered bottom – something that arouses the Sultan’s displeasure and accounts for the servant’s curious name.
Claudia Schreiber cheerfully avails herself of all the cliches from the empire of 1001 Nights to make it clear even to the youngest reader that what we’re dealing with here is a fairy-tale fantasy land. Where else could the Sultan have so many wives and servants? Where else would the sun and the wind act according to the ruler’s wishes?!
Tosspot, for his part, belongs rather more to ‘this world’, and the Sultan’s general cluelessness drives him almost to despair. In order to remedy the situation, the servant starts to show his master the great wide world. In the palace kitchen, the Sultan learns how to taste things; he tries to take a bath without the help of his first nine wives; and goes on holiday for the first time – with all his wives and their luggage. Sultan and Tosspot end up being quite close to one another, though it has to be said that they have some pretty dramatic ups and downs along the way. Thus for instance a philosophical discussion about the nature of the boundary between sea and sky and about alpha and omega leads ultimately to a homily on respect and the need to be able to admit to mistakes.
The dialogue is simple yet very funny. It is often wonderfully absurd, and the author’s frequent use of onomatopoeia means that young listeners will soon be shouting along at the tops of their voices as you read out loud to them. Moreover, Sybille Hein’s illustrations perfectly match the story’s often absurd humour. The pictures are partly made up of collage, and practically every page sports hilarious details which ideally complement the text.
Thus the two eponymous heroes take shape – and it’s sometimes impossible to decide whether the Sultan is naïve, or whether he’s in fact very smart. Is he really clueless, or does he just act that way? And the same goes for the servant: is he really the grouch that he makes himself out to be, or is he actually very fond of the Sultan?
When the Sultan, in the throes of an existential crisis, starts to search for his function in life, Tosspot suggests they try a role reversal: he sits on the cushion mountain, and has the Sultan winch him up and down for hours on end. This settles matters for the Sultan: ‘What a splendid life I have,’ he thought to himself. ‘Doing absolutely nothing, and being waited on hand and foot. Wonderful’.
Heike Friesel
June 2004
[Translated by Helena Ragg - Kirkby]
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