The Neverending Story (German: Die unendliche Geschichte) is a German fantasy novel by Michael Ende, first published in 1979. The standard English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1983. The novel was later adapted into several films.
The majority of the story takes place in the parallel world of Fantastica (Phantásien in the original German version), a world being destroyed by a mysterious force called the Nothing. The first protagonist is a young warrior who is asked by the Empress of Fantastica to set off and find a way to stop the Nothing; the other protagonist is a boy from the real world, a reader of a novel with the same title, for whom the story gradually becomes more and more realistic.
Character: Childlike Empress