Other Worlds
Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Stories about the occult, folk religions, superstition, and spiritual customs in Russia by one of the most essential twentieth-century writers of short fiction and essays.
Though best known for her comic and satirical sketches of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Teffi was a writer of great range and human sympathy. The stories on otherworldly themes in this collection are some of her finest and most profound, displaying the acute psychological sensitivity beneath her characteristic wit and surface brilliance.
Other Worlds presents stories from across the whole of Teffi’s long career, from her early days as a literary celebrity in Moscow to her post-Revolutionary years as an émigré in Paris. In the early story “A Quiet Backwater,” a laundress gives a long disquisition on the name days of the flora and fauna and on the Feast of the Holy Ghost, a day on which “no one dairnst disturb the earth.” The story “Wild Evening” is about the fear of the unknown; “The Kind That Walk,” a penetrating study of antisemitism and of xenophobia; and “Baba Yaga,” about the archetypal Russian witch and her longing for wildness and freedom. Teffi traces the persistent influence of the ancient Slavic gods in superstitions and customs, and the deep connection of the supernatural to everyday life in the provinces. In “Volya,” the autobiographical final story, the power and pain of Baba Yaga is Teffi’s own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Teffi (1872–1952), pseudonym of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, whose exile to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution is documented in her memoir Memories, explores the psychological and spiritual lives of émigrés from that period. The characters in these 25 stories live in a world where spirits can protect or destroy and whose origins are found in Old Russian superstitions, legends, and folktales. People contend with hard lives in isolation, and there is always a lurking sense that nature itself is a living being that exacts revenge ("A Quiet Backwater," "Wild Evening"). Spirits turn into animal form to terrorize or lure their victims to death ("Vurdalak," "Bathhouse Devil"). Mystery is commonplace and inexplicable; peasants and saints alike struggle with mishaps and absurdities ("Wonder Worker," "Wolf Night"). In perhaps the collection's best story, "The Dog," a young man named Tolya vows to turn into a dog to protect a girl he is in love with whenever she calls for help. The uncanny but satisfying ending, featuring a violent Tolya in his new form, is characteristically Teffi. Shape-shifters, demons, spirits, and sorcerers are all brought convincingly to life in tales that bring fright and comfort. The author's fans will find this to be a delightful feast.
