Baba Yaga Laid an Egg
SynopsisPlot
According to Slavic myth, Baba Yaga is a witch who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. With barbed wisdom and razor-sharp wit, Ugresic weaves together the stories of four women in contemporary Eastern Europe: a writer who grants her dying mother’s final wish by traveling to her hometown in Bulgaria, an elderly woman who wakes up every day hoping to die, a buxom blonde hospital worker who’s given up on love, and a serial widow who harbors a secret talent for writing. Through the women’s fears and desires, and their struggles against invisibility, Ugresic presents a brilliantly postmodern retelling of an ancient myth that is infused with humanity and the joy of storytelling.
Story
About this book
In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga is a fearsome figure: a witch who flies in a giant mortar, lives in a house perched on chicken legs, and snatches small children. She appears across Russian and Eastern European culture in literature, film, animation, and music. Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic takes this old character as a starting point for a novel that follows four women in contemporary Eastern Europe, each facing questions about aging, identity, and visibility.
One woman is a writer who travels to her dying mother's hometown in Bulgaria to fulfill a final wish. Another is an elderly woman who wakes each day hoping it will be her last. A third is a hospital worker who has abandoned hope of finding love. The fourth is a serial widow with a hidden skill for writing. Ugresic connects their separate stories through the framework of the Baba Yaga myth, drawing out parallels between the ancient figure and the modern lives of women who feel overlooked or unseen.
The novel is structured as a postmodern retelling, layering folklore with present-day narrative. Ugresic, who left Croatia in the 1990s and became known for writing from a position of cultural displacement, brings a sharp and sometimes barbed tone to subjects like femininity and the experience of growing old.
