Bambi - the work of Felix Salten, a Viennese litterateur, journalist, and man about town - first came out in Vienna a hundred years ago, to great success. An English translation soon appeared, and was widely and well reviewed. Later Walt Disney made his famous movie of the book, and as a consequence Salten's intimate, delicate, poetic, and gripping tale of forest life, a book that captures both the calm and the disquiet of the animal world, has come to be thought of as children's book. Bambi is certainly a book that children can enjoy, but it is also a moving and lasting contribution to the literature of the natural world. In Damion Searls' new translation the fawn Bambi and his mother, the groves and thickets of the forest, the open and dangerous space of the great field, the ever-present threat of the human-the whole intricate weave of life and death that Salten handles so deftly-all come alive for a new generation of readers.