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.

Robert Chandler is an award-winning poet and translator from Russian, French, and Greek, and the editor of Penguin Classics’ Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida. He lives in the U.K.

Sibelan Forrester is a professor of Russian at Swarthmore College. She lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.