The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales (Weatherhead Books on Asia)

Vasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperantist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the famous modernist writer Lu Xun in China. Born in a small Ukrainian village in imperial Russia, he was blinded at a young age by complications from measles. Seeking to escape the limitations imposed on the blind, Eroshenko became a globe-trotting storyteller. He was well known in Japan and China as a social activist and a popular writer of political fairy tales that drew comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde. The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales presents a selection of Eroshenko's stories, translated from Japanese and Esperanto, to English readers for the first time. These fables tell the stories of a religiously disillusioned fish, a jealous paper lantern, a scholarly young mouse, a captive tiger who seeks to liberate his fellow animals, and many more. They are at once inventive and politically charged experiments with the fairy tale genre and charming, lyrical stories that will captivate readers as much today as they did during Eroshenko's lifetime. In addition to eighteen fairy tales, the book includes semiautobiographical writings and prose poems that vividly evoke Eroshenko's life and world. "Born in the ethnically Ukrainian village of Obukhovka (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1890, Eroshenko was blinded at the age of four by measles. After receiving an education at the Moscow School for the Blind and the Royal Normal College for the Blind, in London, where he studied Esperanto and music, Eroshenko travelled to Japan, China, Myanmar, and India, working at times as a musician, writer, teacher, and masseur. In Japan, he befriended a variety of left-wing artistic figures and activists, who taught him Japanese and encouraged him to write fairy tales. Although Eroshenko was expelled from Japan in 1921 for his anarchist and socialist connections, his tales attracted the attention of Chinese modernist Lu Xun, who famously translated them and welcomed the young author to his home in Beijing. This volume consists of 18 fairytales written in Japan and China and brief appendix with some semi-autobiographical pieces. Eroshenko's work should enter the public domain in 2022"-- Provided by publisher Vasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperantist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the writer Lu Xun in China. This book presents a selection of his stories, translated from Japanese and Esperanto, to English readers.