Bambi

Bambi, a roe deer fawn, is born in a thicket deep in the forest and learns from his mother about the meadow, the other animals and the changing seasons. As he grows he meets his cousins Faline and Gobo, learns to fight rival bucks, and is taught by an old, solitary stag, the prince of the forest, the hardest lesson of all: how to survive the terrifying creature the animals call 'He', the hunter with his gun.

Felix Salten (1869–1945), an Austrian writer, published the novel in 1923 as Bambi: A Life in the Woods; it is far more serious than Disney's 1942 film, a quiet meditation on life, loss and death. The Nazis banned it, reading it as an allegory of the persecution of the Jews, and Salten, who was Jewish, fled to Switzerland. This is a modern translation by David Wyllie.