Customer Reviews

Baba Yaga Laid An Egg (Myths S.)

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There is much to be drawn from the story of a resourceful witch. "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg" is a collection of short stories from Dubravka Ugresic, as she tells the tales of four modern Eastern European women as they make their way through the world, using the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga as the foundation for these tales. An original blend of mythology and modern fiction, "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg" is a read that shouldn't be overlooked.

Once you notice them, old women are everywhere...

And so too are the starlings to my mothers great dismay. The noise is bad enough, but the mess they make would drive my mother crazy. She could not stand anything unclean or untidy in her home. But cleanliness was not her only battle, she was losing her words and becoming mixed up from Alzheimer's.

At the Grand Hotel three old women are checking in, how long they stay is up to fate. The oldest is confined to a wheelchair, wearing a single large boot with both legs tucked inside. The next is an exceptionally tall woman who seems to always carry a breeze about her; she also carries a string of dead husbands behind her. The last is a short grey haired woman with big bosoms and an equally big heart.

But what has any of this to do with Baba Yaga, a witch who flies about in a mortar, all but blind with only her great sense of smell to lead her as she moves about the world for good deeds or ill, making mischief at her will. As a woman of great power, Baba Yaga has the ability to alter her size or her shape, often taking the form of a bird. And isn't it birds who lay eggs...

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is an utterly unique story retelling the myth of Baba Yaga in a distinctive style that is free of traditional form. The story of Baba Yaga is a story of women; mothers, daughters and lovers.

Traditionally Baba Yaga is an old woman so it is no surprise that the leading characters here are themselves old woman. But it is not just ageing that is central to the issues in this book but also femininity and identity that is questioned. A story recommended only for those who are willing to put in the effort to get to know this old and startling witch known as Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga Laid An Egg by Dubravka Ugresic


"In the absence of all ideologies, the only refuge that remains for the human imagination is the body."

This book was recommended to me because of course I love (and fear) Baba Yaga. It is part of series in which authors were asked to write based on an ancient myth. This is a post modernist deconstruction of the Slavic witch, by turns amusing, irritating, confusing, and illuminating. As the book says "...while Baba Yaga may not be Oprah Winfrey or Princess Dina, she isn't a completely obscure mythical nonentity either."
I don't know how Baba Yaga came into my childhood. No doubt through books of Russian fairy tales, and the realization that my grandparents were Russian, if Jews (all the more reason to fear her oven.)
This novel is set after the civil wars in the Balkans, after the collapse of the Soviets, after the break up of Yugoslavia. An author takes care of her dying mother and fulfills her wish to travel to Bulgaria, a young graduate student type dogs her steps, a tale within a tale presents three very old women at a spa/casino, and at the end there is a fake/real critical look at all the stories, plus a huge overview of Baba Yaga in numerous mythologies. It is perhaps a bit much, self-conscious, but actually quite satisfying.
It isn't easy to meet a witch and live to tell the tale.

For reviews by Miriam Sagan visit Miriam's Well [...]

Maybe I just don't understand this book. It is a two part novella, then the last third of the book is random, contradictory notes on the mythology of Baba Yaga. They don't fit. Every older woman can't be Baba Yaga