Baba Yaga Laid an Egg Book

Baba Yaga is a witch of Slavic legend. I've always thought it sounded cool as hell. Baba Roga is the Serbian equivalent, though that is disputed.

Ugresic's novel is a meditation on women and ageing, and moreso the parenthetical threat in such. The feminism within appears honest. (as if i could judge, as if i were willing) The narrative concerns a series of situations. The "author" is concerned about her elderly mother living in Zagreb (Croatia). The mother is suffer aphasia and possibly dementia. The "author" receives a fan letter from a Bulgarian folklorist completing her doctorate. The folklorist is coming to Zagreb for a conference and wishes to arrange a meeting. The "author" regretfully declines, citing travel obligations but suggests that the folklorist may wish to stay with her own mother, whose has family in Bulgaria, thus allowing the "fan" a free lodging if she looks after her mum. Doesn't that sound a bit kooky?

Well the "author" and the folklorist ultimately make a trip back to Bulgaria which only serves to further illustrate the questionable attitude of the "author." It also serves to pencil in a cast of characters which feature in the next section. This section occurs at a former spa in the Czech Republic, now rebranded as a wellness center. What ensues is a fairy tale and a delightful one. The final section is a treatise by the folklorist on the titular phenomenon of Baba Yaga

Let us imagine women (that hardly negligible half of humankind, after all), those Baba Yagas, plucking the swords from beneath their heads and sallying forth to settle the accounts?! For every smack in the face, every rape, every affront, every hurt, every drop of spittle on their faces. can we imagine al those Indian brides and widows rising form the ashes where they were burned alive and going forth into the world with drawn swords int heir hands?! Let's try to imagine all those invisible women peering out between their woven bars, from their dark bunker-burkas, and the ones who keep their mouths hidden behind the burka's miniature curtains even when they are speaking, eating and kissing. Let's imagine a million-strong army of 'madwomen', homeless women, beggar women; women with faces scorched by acid, because self-styled righteous men took offense at the expression on a bare female face; women whose lives are completely in the power of their husbands, fathers and brothers; women who were stoned and survived, and others who perished at the hands of male mobs. Let's now imagine all those women lifting their robes and drawing their swords. . .


That vein proceeds for another half of a page. I admired tha admixture of poetry, faux-academic analysis and the quotidian.