Croatian Tales of Long Ago

Croatian Tales of Long Ago
Author: Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2022-05-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The collection Croatian Tales of Long Ago is considered to be a masterpiece and features a series of newly written fairy tales heavily inspired by motifs taken from ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. Croatian Tales of Long Ago are seen as one of the most typical examples of the writing style of Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. The book has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien due to the way it combines original fantasy plots with folk mythology.

Running Away to Home

Running Away to Home
Author: Jennifer Wilson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2011-10-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429989084

A middle class, Midwestern family in search of meaning uproot themselves and move to their ancestral village in Croatia. "We can look at this in two ways," Jim wrote, always the pragmatist. "We can panic and scrap the whole idea. Or we can take this as a sign. They're saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is the kick in the pants we needed to do something completely different. There will always be an excuse not to go..." And that, friends, is how a typically sane middle-aged mother decided to drag her family back to a forlorn mountain village in the backwoods of Croatia. So begins author Jennifer Wilson's journey in Running Away to Home. Jen, her architect husband, Jim, and their two children had been living the typical soccer- and ballet-practice life in the most Middle American of places: Des Moines, Iowa. They overindulged themselves and their kids, and as a family they were losing one another in the rush of work, school, and activities. One day, Jen and her husband looked at each other–both holding their Starbucks coffee as they headed out to their SUV in the mall parking lot, while the kids complained about the inferiority of the toys they just got–and asked themselves: "Is this the American dream? Because if it is, it sort of sucks." Jim and Jen had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. High on wanderlust, they left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj, the land of Jennifer's ancestors. It was a village that seemed hermetically sealed for the last one hundred years, with a population of eight hundred (mostly drunken) residents and a herd of sheep milling around the post office. For several months they lived like locals, from milking the neighbor's cows to eating roasted pig on a spit to desperately seeking the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the Wilson-Hoff family struggled to stay sane (and warm), what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.

Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic

Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004418997

Contemporary Fairy-Tale Magic, edited by Lydia Brugué and Auba Llompart, studies the impact of fairy tales on contemporary cultures from an interdisciplinary perspective, with special emphasis on how literature and film are retelling classic fairy tales for modern audiences. We are currently witnessing a resurgence of fairy tales and fairy-tale characters and motifs in art and popular culture, as well as an increasing and renewed interest in reinventing and subverting these narratives to adapt them to the expectations and needs of the contemporary public. The collected essays also observe how the influence of academic disciplines like Gender Studies and current literary and cinematic trends play an important part in the revision of fairy-tale plots, characters and themes.

Slavic Witchcraft

Slavic Witchcraft
Author: Natasha Helvin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1620558432

A practical guide to the ancient magical tradition of Russian sorcery and Eastern Slavic magical rites • Offers step-by-step instructions for more than 300 spells, incantations, charms, amulets, and practical rituals for love, career success, protection, healing, divination, communicating with spirits and ancestors, and other challenges and situations • Reveals specific places of magical power in the natural world as well as the profound power of graveyards and churches for casting spells • Explores the folk history of this ancient magical tradition, including how the pagan gods gained new life as Eastern Orthodox saints, and shares folktales of magical beings, including sorceresses shapeshifting into animals and household objects Passed down through generations, the Slavic practice of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery is still alive and well in Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as the Balkans and the Baltic states. There are still witches who whisper upon tied knots to curse or heal, sorceresses who shapeshift into animals or household objects, magicians who cast spells for love or good fortune, and common folk who seek their aid for daily problems big and small. Sharing the extensive knowledge she inherited from her mother and grandmother, including spells of the “Old Believers” previously unknown to outsiders, Natasha Helvin explores in detail the folk history and practice of Russian sorcery and Eastern Slavic magical rites, offering a rich compendium of more than 300 spells, incantations, charms, and practical rituals for love, relationships, career success, protection, healing, divination, averting the evil eye, communicating with spirits and ancestors, and a host of other life challenges and daily situations, with complete step-by-step instructions to ensure your magical goals are realized. She explains how this tradition has only a thin Christian veneer over its pagan origins and how the Slavic pagan gods and goddesses acquired new lives as the saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She details how the magical energy for these spells and rituals is drawn from the forces of nature, revealing specific places of power in the natural world as well as the profound power of graveyards and churches for casting spells. She explores the creation of amulets and talismans, the importance of icons, and the proper recital of magical language and actions during spells, as well as how one becomes a witch or sorceress. Offering a close examination of these two-thousand-year-old occult practices, Helvin also includes Slavic folk advice, adapted for the modern era. Revealing what it means to be a Slavic witch or sorceress, and how this vocation pervades all aspects of life, she shows that each of us has magic within that we can use to take control of our own destiny.

Croatia

Croatia
Author: Marcus Tanner
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300246575

In this updated edition of his acclaimed history, Marcus Tanner takes us from the first Croat principalities of the Early Middle Ages through to the country's independence in the modern era "Full of absorbing stories and important insights, Croatia deserves to be read."--Aleska Djilas, New York Times Book Review "A lucid, expert account of Croatia's past at the bloody crossroads of big-power ambitions--Turks, Austrians, Italians, Russians--leads smoothly into a riveting close-up view of the 1990s fight for independence." Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales

Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales
Author: Robert Nisbet Bain
Publisher: Legare Street Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-10-27
Genre:
ISBN: 9781015883369

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The History of Lika, Croatia: Land of War and Warriors

The History of Lika, Croatia: Land of War and Warriors
Author: John R. Oreskovich
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0359864198

"This is a history of Lika, a region of Croatia known for its soldiers and poverty. It is the only known history of Lika in English. What follows is a history of Lika which the author has divided into four epochs, the first, ancient Lika, when Lika was part of the Roman Empire. The second is Slav-Croatian Lika that existed prior to the arrival of the Ottomans, when Lika was integrated into the European feudal system. The third section is the Turkish wars, when the Habsburgs and their army controlled Lika. The fourth and last section is from the 19th century to the present, when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the country that became Yugoslavia, replaced Austrian rule in Lika. The author's family is from the Lika region of western Croatia"--

Zagreb Noir

Zagreb Noir
Author: Ivan Sršen
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1617754234

“Zagreb’s noirish underbelly comes from a new nation familiar with both war and war crimes. Mr. Sršen’s handpicked selections are anything but ordinary.” —New York Journal of Books Eastern European history is filled with noir-ish and harrowing tales, and Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, certainly has its fill. Layers of trauma from its war years, soccer hooliganism, and a shadowy Balkan underground all contribute to the city’s transient and inconstant character. Editor Ivan Sršen has curated a diverse, powerful, and dramatic group of stories that offer tremendous insight into the perspectives of contemporary Croatians. Zagreb Noir features translated stories by: Ivan Vidić, Josip Novakovich, Andrea Žigić-Dolenec, Robert Perišić, Mima Simić, Pero Kvesić, Nada Gašić, Zoran Pilić, Ružica Gašperov, Darko Milošić, Nora Verde, Ivan Sršen, Neven Ušumović, and Darko Macan. “Zagreb, Croatia—its culture and its touchstones—will be terra incognita for many U.S. readers . . . Notable is Nora Verde’s ‘She-Warrior,’ in which a young woman’s carefully planned anarchist activities are smacked down by a triple helping of reality.” —Publishers Weekly “The stories shed light on a sickness that stirs within society’s boundaries. Readers will easily glean that this sickness is not exclusive to Zagreb. Sršen reveals the ugly truth about human nature that burrows under the surface in war-torn countries.” —The Examiner (San Francisco)