How the Hedgehog Married and Other Croatian Fairy Tales

Fairy tales occur both in oral and in literary form. The focus in this book has been on preserving the elemental structure of oral tradition without embellishment. But, this is a distinctive literary collection, one that gathers a dozen fairy tales which come from the Croatian national folklore tradition. This is also a contemporary English-language version that respects the ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. And, through exceptionally communicative translations, Dasha C. Nisula has elevated them to be superlative examples of a how common plots, motifs, and elements of the fairy tale are their own best explanation—that is, the tale’s meaning is contained in the totality of the threadline in the story. And these are 12 great stories! The book also includes a detailed introduction to Croatian fairy tales, and, in a historical and cultural sense, to the wider genre of fairy tales. In this bilingual edition the Croatian and English-in-translation are presented together, accompanied by a selection of original colour artworks by the cover artist, Josip Botteri Dini.

Dasha C. Nisula (translator) has taught Russian and Croatian languages, literature, and culture, and is a translator of poetry and short stories from these languages. Her work has appeared in An Anthology of South Slavic Literatures, the journals Modern Poetry in Translation, Southwestern Review, International Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, EXILE?Quarterly, and two books in translation: Music Is Everything (The poetry of Slavko Mihalic) and You With Hands More Innocent (The Poetry of Vesna Parun) with Exile Editions. She is a member of the American Literary Translators Association. Josip Botteri Dini was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1943, and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1968. He has had over a hundred one-man exhibitions in Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, Padua, Toronto, Los Angeles, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Mostar, Split, Dubrovnik, and more. Known for his illustrative paintings and graphics, he also works extensively in stained glass and mosaics. Josip Botteri Dini is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Split.