Народные русские сказки (Russian Fairy Tales), Выпуск 2

These are the fairy tales that Russia told around hearth fires long before they reached children's books: dark, wild, and bracingly strange. Alexander Afanasyev spent decades traveling Russian villages, recording the stories peasants told their children, preserving a world offorest witches and talking animals, clever peasants who outsmart tsars and devils, and magic that comes at a terrible price. This second volume gathers tales from the great 1860s collection that became the backbone of Russian folklore, translated here with the raw vitality of the original vernacular intact. The stories pulse with the rhythms of agricultural life, with the fears and hopes of people who lived closer to starvation and superstition than we can easily imagine. They are not gentle tales. They are the real thing.