2011 Longlist
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology. She appears in many forms: as Pupa, a tricky, cantankerous old woman who keeps her legs tucked into a huge furry boot; as a trio of mischievous elderly women who embark on the trip of a lifetime to a hotel spa; and as a villainous flock of ravens, black hens and magpies infected with the H5N1 virus. But what story does Baba Yaga have to tell us today?
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Celia
Hawkesworth
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Mark
Thompson
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Ellen
Elias-Bursac
Ellen Elias-Bursac is a free-lance literary translator and independent scholar President of the American Literary Translators Association Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
She has been working as a literary and community translator since the mid-1970's, starting when she lived in Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Croatia) from 1974 to 1990. Just a year before the war broke out in Yugoslavia, the family moved back to the Boston area where Ellen is from. She taught for ten years in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department of Harvard University as a preceptor (language instructor). After that she went to work at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where she spent a total of six and a half years as a translator/reviser in the English Translation Unit.
Ellen Elias-Bursac is a free-lance literary translator and independent scholar President of the American Literary Translators Association Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
She has been working as a literary and community translator since the mid-1970's, starting when she lived in Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Croatia) from 1974 to 1990. Just a year before the war broke out in Yugoslavia, the family moved back to the Boston area where Ellen is from. She taught for ten years in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department of Harvard University as a preceptor (language instructor). After that she went to work at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where she spent a total of six and a half years as a translator/reviser in the English Translation Unit.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The author tells an insightful, intelligent and sometimes humorous story that brings alive the ancient myth of female emancipation- authentic Slavic tradition but universally applicable.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Country
Croatia
Original Language
Croatian
Publisher
Canongate US
Translator
Ellen Elias-Bursac,
Celia Hawkesworth,
Mark Thompson
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