Literature

‘She turned into a frog, into a lizard, into all kinds of other reptiles and then into a spindle’In these tales, young women go on long and difficult 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. Half the tales here are true oral tales, collected by folklorists during the last two centuries, while the others are reworkings of oral tales by four great Russian writers: Alexander Pushkin, Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov and Andrey Platonov. In his introduction to these new translations, Robert Chandler writes about the primitive magic inherent in these tales and the taboos around them, while in the afterword, Sibelan Forrester discusses the witch Baba Yaga. This edition also includes an appendix, bibliography and notes. ‘This is a unique, beautifully edited book: an essential addition to the library of any Russophile’ – Spectator *Longlisted for the Rossica Translation Prize 2014*Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth ChandlerWith Sibelan Forrester, Anna Gunin and Olga Meerson

BRITISH BOOK AWARDS AUTHOR & FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER ‘The most absorbing book I read all year.’ Roxane Gay ____________________________ This is Britain as you’ve never read it.This is Britain as it has never been told.From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They’re each looking for something – a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .____________________________'[Bernardine Evaristo] is one of the very best that we have’ Nikesh Shukla on Twitter’A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain’ Elle’Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity’ Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter’Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life’ Ali Smith, author of How to be both’Exceptional. You have to order it right now’ Stylist’Sparkling, inventive’ Sunday Times