Can I describe this as a geopolitical children’s book with an eventual message of peace and reconciliation?The idea …Can I describe this as a geopolitical children’s book with an eventual message of peace and reconciliation?The idea is that two squabbling brothers, one fat and one thin, discover an underground world divided into two states, that of the plump Fattypuffs and that of the scrawny Thinifers. Written in 1930 the two nations are apparently based on France and Germany and are no less antagonistic, but are also shown to be complimentary, even symbiotic.I came across it at school, perhaps it sticks in the mind because of how thorough going the fantasy is. The Thinifers are hectic, eat to live types, who manufacture thin things like wire and spaghetti, while their rivals the Fattypuffs are expansive and have an economy based around the production of rounded and full figured objects like sausages and tyres. Sadly there are no jokes about lean manufacturing, but the old line about generals always preparing to re-fight the last war is deployed in a kind of Maginot line situation the full figures of the Fattypuffs mean they cannot swiftly get out from their special curved trenches, but as can be the case defeat in war allows for victory in defeat... . Ultimately the two warring nations are able to begin to reconcile and unify which offers the promise of a less fractious relationship between the two brothers who return to our surface world.Apparently Maurois was from an Alsatian family. Perhaps there is a wish fulfilment element here in the final ability of both sides to appreciate what the other has to offer and in the mutual deconstruction of prejudices. The actual book, I hasten to add, is considerably less earnest than my review and has amusing illustrations.