Croatian Tales of Long Ago
SynopsisPlot
Complete with goblins, gullible children, and mischievous and kindly sprites. The stories whisk you through a world of mysterious woods, towering mountains, cloaks of dazzling gold, and doting grandfathers. They have the characters arrayed against wicked neighbors, cruel family members, and snakes in human clothing. Like her predecessors, Anderson and the Brothers Grimm, Mazuranic does not flinch from the darker realities of life, the biting cold, and the fallibility of humans, but as only a genius can she wraps the brutal realities in a narrative that allows the reader to make sense of it and feel that they just have won the day.
Story
About this book
Croatian Tales of Long Ago is a collection of fairy tales by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, a Croatian writer sometimes compared to Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The stories draw on Slavic folklore, populating their pages with goblins, sprites, and shape-shifting creatures. Settings range from dense mysterious forests to high mountain landscapes, and the characters include trusting children, protective grandfathers, and figures whose outward appearance hides a darker nature.
The tales do not soften the harsher side of life. Cold, cruelty, and human weakness appear alongside wonder and enchantment. Wicked neighbours and treacherous relatives pose real dangers, and the children in these stories face situations with genuine stakes. At the same time, the narratives follow an older pattern in which resourcefulness and plain kindness still count for something.
This English-language edition brings the collection to readers outside Croatia. The book belongs to a European line of writers who gathered regional oral material and reshaped it into written tales with named authors and a fixed printed form, meant for reading as much as for telling aloud.
