For the first time in the last hundred years, the prose of Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko returns to readers in its authentic form — with its original rhythm and distinctive Slobozhanshchyna dialect. Vengeful witches, the dead who celebrate Easter, enchanted treasures, a tumbleweed — a witness against a murderer… Before us unfolds a vivid and mystical picture of life in the Ukrainian lands from Konotop to Kharkiv. Kvitka-Osnovianenko's novellas are also European plots transplanted onto native soil, sermons, literary polemics, linguistic play. And none of this is ever mentioned in textbooks.
