A collection of thirty-one traditional folktales from the peoples living along the Amur River in the Russian Far East, gathered and retold by Dmitri Nagishkin.

The stories move through animals, spirits, hunters, transformations, family disputes by sharing how people disappear into birds, serpents burn villages, bears negotiate with humans, and the natural world constantly reflects who resides within.

Gennady Pavlishin’s full-colour images draw heavily on the decorative traditions, clothing, landscape and visual culture of the Amur region, making the book sit somewhere between folklore collection, illustrated ethnography and extremely handsome art object. When it appeared in 1980, The New Yorker singled it out as an unusually beautiful volume whose stories remained strange and lively enough to work well beyond specialist folklore readership.

Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1980. First American edition. Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket. Printed and bound in Japan. Light shelf wear to jacket, with minor rubbing and edge wear, particularly at corners and spine ends; boards and binding remain sound. Internally clean and unmarked, with the colour illustrations bright and crisp. Very good condition.