Baba Yaga is an ambiguous and fascinating figure. She appears in traditional Russian folktales as a monstrous and hungry cannibal, or as a canny inquisitor of the adolescent hero or heroine of the tale. In new translations and with an introduction by Sibelan Forrester, "Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales" is a selection of tales that draws from the famous collection of Aleksandr Afanas'ev, but also includes some tales from the lesser-known nineteenth-century collection of Ivan Khudiakov. This new collection includes beloved classics such as "Vasilisa the Beautiful" and "The Frog Princess," as well as a version of the tale that is the basis for the ballet "The Firebird." The preface and introduction place these tales in their traditional context with reference to Baba Yaga's continuing presence in today's culture--the witch appears iconically on tennis shoes, tee shirts, even tattoos. The stories are enriched with many wonderful illustrations of Baba Yaga, some old (traditional "lubok" woodcuts), some classical (the marvelous images from Victor Vasnetsov or Ivan Bilibin), and some quite recent or solicited specifically for this collection

The Length of Days features a wild cast of characters-Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian-and cameo appearances by Rosa Luxemburg, Amy Winehouse, and others. Embedded narratives attributed to one character, an alcoholic chemist-turned-massage-therapist, broaden the reader's view of the funny, ironic, or tragic lives of people who remained in the ill-fated Donbas after Russia's initial aggression in 2014. Unexpected allies emerge to try to stop the war, as characters criticize Ukraine's government at the time, its self-interest, and failures to support its citizens in the east. With elements of magical realism, the work combines poetry and a wicked sense of humor with depth of political analysis, philosophy, and moral interrogation. Witty references to popular culture-Ukrainian and European-underline the international and transnational aspects of Ukrainian literature. The novel ends on a hopeful note even though by then the main characters have already died twice: they return with greater power each time. As the author's last novel written originally in the Russian language, The Length of Days is a deeply Ukrainian work, set mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z-an uncanny foretelling of what this letter has come to symbolize since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Up to now, there has been no complete English-language version of the Russian folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. This translation is based on L. G. Barag and N. V. Novikov's edition, widely regarded as the authoritative Russian-language edition. The present edition includes commentaries to each tale as well as its international classification number. This third volume contains 305 tales, those numbered 319-579, as well as forty-five additional tales from among those denied publication by the Russian censors. The folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev represent the largest single collection of folktales in any European language and perhaps in the world. Widely regarded as the Russian Grimm, Afanas'ev collected folktales from throughout the Russian Empire in what are now regarded as the three East Slavic languages, Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian. In his lifetime, Afanas'ev published more than 575 tales in his most popular and best-known work, Narodnye russkie skazki. In addition to this basic collection, he prepared a volume of Russian legends, many on religious themes; a collection of mildly obscene tales, Russkie zavetnye skazki; and voluminous writings on Slavic folklife and mythology. His works were subject to the strict censorship of ecclesiastical and state authorities that lasted until the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Overwhelmingly, his particular emendations were stylistic, while those of the censors mostly concerned content.

The Length of Days features a wild cast of characters-Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian-and cameo appearances by Rosa Luxemburg, Amy Winehouse, and others. Embedded narratives attributed to one character, an alcoholic chemist-turned-massage-therapist, broaden the reader's view of the funny, ironic, or tragic lives of people who remained in the ill-fated Donbas after Russia's initial aggression in 2014. Unexpected allies emerge to try to stop the war, as characters criticize Ukraine's government at the time, its self-interest, and failures to support its citizens in the east. With elements of magical realism, the work combines poetry and a wicked sense of humor with depth of political analysis, philosophy, and moral interrogation. Witty references to popular culture-Ukrainian and European-underline the international and transnational aspects of Ukrainian literature. The novel ends on a hopeful note even though by then the main characters have already died twice: they return with greater power each time. As the author's last novel written originally in the Russian language, The Length of Days is a deeply Ukrainian work, set mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z-an uncanny foretelling of what this letter has come to symbolize since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Up to now, there has been no complete English-language version of the Russian folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. This translation is based on L. G. Barag and N. V. Novikov's edition, widely regarded as the authoritative Russian-language edition. The present edition includes commentaries to each tale as well as its international classification number. This third volume contains 305 tales, those numbered 319-579, as well as forty-five additional tales from among those denied publication by the Russian censors. The folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev represent the largest single collection of folktales in any European language and perhaps in the world. Widely regarded as the Russian Grimm, Afanas'ev collected folktales from throughout the Russian Empire in what are now regarded as the three East Slavic languages, Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian. In his lifetime, Afanas'ev published more than 575 tales in his most popular and best-known work, Narodnye russkie skazki. In addition to this basic collection, he prepared a volume of Russian legends, many on religious themes; a collection of mildly obscene tales, Russkie zavetnye skazki; and voluminous writings on Slavic folklife and mythology. His works were subject to the strict censorship of ecclesiastical and state authorities that lasted until the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Overwhelmingly, his particular emendations were stylistic, while those of the censors mostly concerned content.

Ignatova's verse is highly concentrated--rich with aromas and colors and the sometimes bitter hint of what is left unsaid. Particular words or motifs gain intensity as they repeat through varied contexts. Her verse is classical, with effective but traditional versification and frequent shades of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and of course Pushkin.

Ignatova's work is also unmistakably contemporary in its stylistic range, marked not only by current events but by the dissident angst, subversive linguistic play and conversational ease of the late Soviet period. She combines both Russian Orthodox and Biblical spiritual sensibility by setting her poems amid the famous beauties and chimeras of St. Petersburg, places where she has visited or has family ties (Crimea and Smolensk), and the new, ancient environs of Jerusalem, described as crystalline and distinct from St. Petersburg's granite.

Elena Alekseyevna Ignatova was born in Leningrad in 1947 and began to publish her poetry abroad in 1975. Her book "The Warm Earth" appeared in Leningrad in 1989, not long before she immigrated to Israel in 1990. Ignatova also penned the substantial historical and cultural survey "Notes on Saint Petersburg," in which she conveys her vision of the city on the occasion of its 300th anniversary.

Sibelan Forrester has translated the work of numerous Russian poets, as well as stories from Serbian and Croatian, and has written scholarly works on Russian literature, especially Modernist poetry. She is an associate professor of Russian in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Swarthmore College.

Vladimir Propp is the Russian folklore specialist most widely known outside Russia thanks to the impact of his 1928 book Morphology of the Folktale-but Morphology is only the first of Propp's contributions to scholarship. This volume translates into English for the first time his book The Russian Folktale, which was based on a seminar on Russian folktales that Propp taught at Leningrad State University late in his life. Edited and translated by Sibelan Forrester, this English edition contains Propp's own text and is supplemented by notes from his students. The Russian Folktale begins with Propp's description of the folktale's aesthetic qualities and the history of the term; the history of folklore studies, first in Western Europe and then in Russia and the USSR; and the place of the folktale in the matrix of folk culture and folk oral creativity. The book presents Propp's key insight into the formulaic structure of Russian wonder tales (and less schematically than in Morphology, though in abbreviated form), and it devotes one chapter to each of the main types of Russian folktales: the wonder tale, the "novellistic" or everyday tale, the animal tale, and the cumulative tale. Even Propp's bibliography, included here, gives useful insight into the sources accessible to and used by Soviet scholars in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Propp's scholarly authority and his human warmth both emerge from this well-balanced and carefully structured series of lectures. An accessible introduction to the Russian folktale, it will serve readers interested in folklore and fairy-tale studies in addition to Russian history and cultural studies.