From the Bookshelf of Around the World…

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Dubravka Ugrešić,

Ellen Elias-Bursać (Translator)

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Oct 17, 2014 Story rated it really liked it

Shelves: readwomen2019, dark-humour, fairy-tales-and-myths, death-and-dying, books-in-translation, cronecore

In Slavic folk stories, Baba Yaga is a supernatural crone/ witch /sorceress who lives in a house with chicken feet and flies through the air in a mortar, sometimes hurting and sometimes helping people. Sometimes she's one person and sometimes three. But always, she's old, old, old, so frighteningly old and decrepit.

Dubravka Ugrešić's re-imagining of Baba Yaga's story (part of the Cannongate Myths series) is a triptych. The first part is a wry but mournful reflection by a daughter about her mothe In Slavic folk stories, Baba Yaga is a supernatural crone/ witch /sorceress who lives in a house with chicken feet and flies through the air in a mortar, sometimes hurting and sometimes helping people. Sometimes she's one person and sometimes three. But always, she's old, old, old, so frighteningly old and decrepit.

Dubravka Ugrešić's re-imagining of Baba Yaga's story (part of the Cannongate Myths series) is a triptych. The first part is a wry but mournful reflection by a daughter about her mother's old age. The second and funniest is about three crones who go to a spa and and make a lot of things happen while the third part "Baba Yaga for Beginners," is written by a fictional folklorist who interprets the first two stories. Overall, a funny, dark and interesting introduction to the Baba Yaga stories as well as a rousing reflection on society's treatment of elderly women and women in general.

Two quotations from the story, the first from the beginning and the second from the end:

"At first you don’t see them. At first they’re invisible. And then all at once you begin to spot them. They shuffle around the world like armies of elderly angels. One of them peers into your face. She glares at you, her eyes wide, her gaze a pale blue, and voices her request with a proud and condescending tone. She is asking for your help, she needs to cross the street but she cannot do it alone… You feel a pang of sympathy for the old lady, you are moved, you do a good deed, swept by the thrill of gallantry. It is precisely at this moment that you should dig in your heels, resist the siren call, make an effort to lower the temperature of your heart. Remember, their tears do not mean the same thing as yours do. Because if you relent, give in, exchange a few more words, you will be in their thrall. You will slide into a world that you had no intention of entering, because your time has not yet come, your hour, for God’s sake, has not come.”

"Let us imagine women (that hardly negligible half of humankind, after all), those Baba Yagas, plucking the swords from beneath their heads and sallying forth to settle the accounts?! For every smack in the face, every rape, every affront, every hurt, every drop of spittle on their faces. Can we imagine all those Indian brides and widows rising form the ashes where they were burned alive and going forth into the world with drawn swords into their hands?!

Let's try to imagine all those invisible women peering out between their woven bars, from their dark bunker-burkas, and the ones who keep their mouths hidden behind the burka's miniature curtains even when they are speaking, eating and kissing. Let's imagine a million-strong army of 'madwomen', homeless women, beggar women; women with faces scorched by acid, because self-styled righteous men took offense at the expression on a bare female face; women whose lives are completely in the power of their husbands, fathers and brothers; women who were stoned and survived, and others who perished at the hands of male mobs.

Let's now imagine all those women lifting their robes and drawing their swords..." ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Jun 29, 2016 Sanne marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: atw-europe-croatia

Jan 22, 2019 Sally marked it as to-read

Aug 14, 2020 Lilisa rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, dnf, croatia, fantasy, mythology, bulgaria, translated, 2020, around-the-world-2020-lilisa

« previous 1 2 next »

Group Home Bookshelf Discussions

Photos Videos

Send invite Members Polls