The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales
Kindle Edition
Columbia University Press · Ebook · March 7, 2023
Vasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperantist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the famous modernist writer Lu Xun in China.
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- Who it’s for
- For when you want fairy tales that keep their polish and their teeth.
- Genres
- Short Stories (Single Author), Fantasy Anthologies, Russian & Former Soviet Collections
- Published
- Columbia University Press, March 7, 2023
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Vasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperantist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the famous modernist writer Lu Xun in China. Born in a small Ukrainian village in imperial Russia, he was blinded at a young age by complications from measles. Seeking to escape the limitations imposed on the blind, Eroshenko became a globe-trotting storyteller.
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He was well known in Japan and China as a social activist and a popular writer of political fairy tales that drew comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde. The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales presents a selection of Eroshenko’s stories, translated from Japanese and Esperanto, to English readers for the first time. These fables tell the stories of a religiously disillusioned fish, a jealous paper lantern, a scholarly young mouse, a captive tiger who seeks to liberate his fellow animals, and many more. They are at once inventive and politically charged experiments with the fairy tale genre and charming, lyrical stories that will captivate readers as much today as they did during Eroshenko’s lifetime. In addition to eighteen fairy tales, the book includes semiautobiographical writings and prose poems that vividly evoke Eroshenko’s life and world.
Fairy Tales, Sharpened
For when you want fairy tales that keep their polish and their teeth.
Come here for
- modern fairy tales, not cozy ones
- short-form pieces with a literary edge
Expect
- layered reading
- a serious, conversation-ready tone
Where it sits
| Short Stories (Single Author) | 59% |
|---|---|
| Russian & Former Soviet Collections | 39% |
| Fantasy Anthologies | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Japanese Literary Collections
- Russian & Former Soviet Collections
- Fairy Tale & Myth Criticism
- Authors
- Vasily Eroshenko, Adam Kuplowsky
- Publisher
- Columbia University Press
- Published
- March 7, 2023
- Format
- Ebook
- Reading lane
- Japanese Literary Collections