proseandpassion:

Karl May: Winnetou I. 1951 edition originally owned by my mother, but I read this one (and 30+ other books by the author) many times as a child. Excuses: 1) this is part of the bedrock of Germany’s romantic soul.  2) as KM essentially converted the content of an encyclopaedia  into dramatic plots (he hadn’t seen the places he wrote about), one could actually learn lots of things about the real world from the books. 3) we didn’t have Harry Potter at the time.