Fantasy & magical realism (Children's/YA)
On a drab winter evening, an apparition of a flying old woman is spotted in Bloomsbury, an area of London well-known for its magical, masonic and shamanism associations. This is followed by the arrival of Yadwiga, alias Baba Yaga, one of the most interesting characters of East European folklore – an ambiguous witch, a sorceress and an unlikely super-heroine. She has come to London as part of the struggling Sablins family – recent migrants from a fictitious East European country. It is here that their phantasmagorical adventures really begin.Yadwiga joined the Sablins when life in the forest, where she had been dwelling inside a hut on hen’s legs for over a thousand years, became impossible due to “deforestation” and the invasion of over-curious visitors (Baba Yaga can’t take being asked questions, for each question makes her a bit older – a curse imposed on her by her former partner and now sworn enemy, Koshchei the Deathless, the incarnation of all the world’s evil). Telling the story of her life for the last 600 or so years to her long-lost sister Melissa, Yadwiga has to slow down time in Bloomsbury.The story takes the reader on a fascinating excursion through the history of Slavic and British folklore juxtaposed on the vicissitudes of modern Western life.In the first book of the series, Yadwiga is helping the Sablins to settle down in the UK and to come to grips with their new existence in the West. It will also look back at what had made them take the decision to leave their home country.The plot is riddled with revealing and funny happenings. “Granny Yaga” and her best friend and protégé Danya Sablin, a boy of 11, will have to deal with school bullies and football fans, thieves and oligarchs, politicians and policemen in their attempt to overcome injustice and to create a better world, where miracles and magic are part and parcel of everyday life.Unlike most of Baba Yaga’s folklorist portrayals, Yadwiga in "Granny Yaga" is modern, positive, witty and selfless, with all her character traits based on meticulous research of fables, history, paganism and occultism.Among other characters are Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Carl Yung, students, pickpockets, ticket inspectors, British Museum curators - as well as classical literary characters and personages from East European (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish etc.), and British (Welsh, Scottish, English) folklore tales. The Writer and the book itself are also parts of the story. The main message of "Granny Yaga" is the importance and the magical power of literature.
