Czech Folktales

The determined and lively Czech people offer their lively perspectives on life through their vivid folk and fairy tales.

The Czech people trace their roots through medieval Bohemia and further back to the ancient Western Slavs before the start of the Viking Age. Their lively stories are parables and moral fables, rich with satire and the weave of determination in the face of grim reality. With a new introduction this new collection brings you classic tales including 'The Three Roses', 'The Witch and the Horseshoes', 'The Haunted Mill' and 'The Soldier and the Devil'. Such stories cling to the fantasy that all will come well in the end and that justice will be well served by truth, common threads in the proud folklore of the Slavic peoples throughout the world.

FLAME TREE 451: From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of myths, folklore and the fantastic.

About the Author

Rajendra Chitnis is associate professor of Czech and Slovak at the University of Oxford, where he teaches Czech and Slovak literature from the fourteenth century to the present. He writes mainly on twentieth-century and contemporary Czech, Russian and Slovak literature. He is the author of Literature in Post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe (2005) and Vladislav Vančura: The Heart of the Czech Avant-garde (2007) and lead editor of Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations (2020).