This quaint novel for children was published a few years before The Neverending Story. It has an odd charm but I’ve now read it twice and don’t think that it’s nearly as good. At its heart is a plea for people to stop rushing about trying to save time and to enjoy the simpler things, such as conversation, imaginative play and nature.

The story is set in an unspecified European city, where a little girl called Momo lives in a ruined amphitheatre. She is a great listener and has a lot of friends. Then the sinister men in grey from the bank arrive, whose currency is time. They find ways to speed up the pace of modern life to make people unhappy and give away their precious time. Momo finds herself alone. With the help of a future-seeing tortoise and a professor in charge of doling out time, Momo attempts to defeat the men in grey.

I liked the pure creativity of the concept and the character of the tortoise, who communicates with writing that appears on her shell. Momo herself I wasn’t that keen on, because she was too kind and patient to be a real child. She had no backstory either and it seemed too improbable for a contemporary tale, even one about beings who control time, that a child in rags appears from nowhere and lives in a ruin without anyone intervening or finding out where she’s from.

First published in Germany, 1973. This edition translated by J Maxwell Brownjohn for Puffin Books, 1985. Despite the Chris Riddell illustration on the front, it’s not illustrated inside.