Rachael asked Janet Fitch:

Janet, I'm looking for the most comprehensive collection of Russian/Slavic folklore, mythology, fairy tales, etc., but translated into English. I'm hopeful that in doing your research for your latest book you've read something like this? I keep coming across reimaginings, or mini-anthologies, or heavily edited versions of stories that are highly sanitized and less pagan than they ought to be. Any recommendations?

Janet Fitch Such a rich culture for folklore. I think that Russian Fairy Tales,/i>, collected by Aleksandr Afansa'ev, translated by Norbert Guberman and published by Pantheon is what you're looking for--the most comprehensive, most authentic. Afansay'ev collected them in the 19th century, and there's 175 of them. This is what my character Marina and her brothers would have read.

I actually preferred the tales in the shorter Russian Fairy Tales Forward by Forest Wheeler, published by Senate in 1995 (First published in 1912 as Russian Wonder Tales) as more crafted and shaped, there are only 12 of them, and the sensibility is more the written rather than oral tradition, but I don't think that's what you're looking for.

The MOST fascinating book and most reflective of pagan Rus is a book called The Bathhouse At Midnight: Magic in Russia by W.F. Ryan, from the Magic In History series published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, "A historical survey of Magic and Divination in Russia." This is a blisteringly comprehensive academic book, well-indexed, with a complete bibliography, and you really get a look at the beliefs and practices in the villages, with the strong pagan undertow. I would recommend it to anyone really interested in the soul of Russia.

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