Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 21st October 2025
Hardback
Published: 24th June 2015
Paperback
Published: 20th October 2014
Paperback
Published: 28th January 2015
Paperback
Published: 17th March 2020
The Letter for the King
By (Author) Tonke Dragt
Illustrated by Tonke Dragt
Translated by Laura Watkinson
Pushkin Children's Books
Pushkin Children's Books
21st October 2025
United Kingdom
Children
Fiction
839.3137
Paperback
512
Width 129mm, Height 198mm
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 perilous mission that could cost him his life. He must deliver a secret letter to the King who lives across the Great Mountains - a letter upon which the future of the entire realm depends.
It means abandoning his home, breaking all the rules and leaving everything behind - even the knighthood he has dreamed of for so long.
The fate of a kingdom depends on just one person...
He must trust no one.
He must keep his true identity secret.
Above all, he must never reveal what is in the letter.
'A true page-turner' - Sunday Times
'A thrilling, page-turning tale... My 10- and 11-year-old were both gripped' - Telegraph
'This 1962 pulse-pounding epic... will keep all high-fantasy addicts riveted from the first page' - Metro
'A seamless translation...Tonke Dragts novel has the simplicity of plot and clarity of expression characteristic of great childrens fiction... this spellbinding classic of high fantasy never once flags' - James Lovegrove
'A cracker' - Spectator
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.