Kristiina Ehin's work is much loved and honoured in Estonia and her poetry is finding an ever-wider audience of admirers in the English-speaking world and beyond, but the fact that she is also a very gifted writer of prose is not yet well-known outside Estonia.

The stories in this book have their roots in an age-old oral story-telling tradition. They are very singular fairy tales for grown-ups - genuine and many-layered, contemporary, yet at the same time primeval. They have the surreal, fluid quality of dreams.

Ilmar Lehtpere is the translator of The Drums of Silence (Oleander, 2007), awarded the Poetry Society Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation, and several other works by Kristiina Ehin.