The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• MitwirkendeR: Kuplowsky, Adam,; Zipes, Jack,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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. 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword: The Piercing Truths of a Blind Storyteller -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Japanese Tales (1915–1921) -- 1. The Tale of the Paper Lantern -- 2. The Sad Little Fish -- 3. The Scholar’s Head -- 4. By a Pond -- 5. An Eagle’s Heart -- 6. Little Pine -- 7. A Spring Night’s Dream -- 8. The Martyr -- 9. The Death of the Canary -- 10. The Mad Cat -- 11. For the Sake of Mankind -- 12. Two Little Deaths -- 13. The Narrow Cage -- Part II. Chinese Tales (1921–1923) -- 14. From “Tales of a Withered Leaf ” -- 15. The Tragedy of the Chick -- 16. Father Time -- 17. The Red Flower -- Appendix -- Bibliography