ABOUT RUSSIAN MAGIC TALES FROM PUSHKIN TO PLATONOV

For fans of fairy tales and the literary supernatural: a unique collection of Russian short stories from the last 200 years

In these folk tales, young women go on long and perilous quests, wicked stepmothers turn children into geese, and tsars ask dangerous riddles, with help or hindrance from magical dolls, cannibal witches, talking skulls, stolen wives, and brothers disguised as wise birds. Some of the stories here were collected by folklorists during the last two centuries, while the others are reworkings of oral tales by four of the greatest writers in Russian literature: Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov, Andrey Platonov, and Alexander Pushkin, author of Eugene Onegin, the classic Russian novel in verse. Among the many classic stories included here are the tales of Baba Yaga, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Father Frost, and the Frog Princess.

About the Editor

Robert Chandler is a poet and translator. His translations from Russian include Aleksandr Pushkin's Dubrovsky and The Captain's Daughter, Nikolay Leskov's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate and The Road. With his wife Elizabeth and other colleagues he has co-translated numerous works by Andrey Platonov; Soul won the 2004 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages award for best translation from a Slavonic language, as did his translation of The Railway by the contemporary Uzbek novelist Hamid Ismailov. His Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida is published in Penguin Classics.

Review

This is a unique, beautifully edited book: an essential addition to the library of any Russophile ― Spectator

Evoking the realm 'across thrice nine lands', [this book offers] us a richly imagined perspective on our own world ― The Times Literary Supplements