Buy Book "Gift Mini Series (set of 4 books)" in Ukrainian

Book 1: Pygmalion Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was a famous Irish writer and playwright, Nobel Prize winner. He wrote one of his masterpiece plays inspired by the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with his creation, a statue of a girl, and asks the goddess to breathe life into her. In Shaw, however, the main character, the vulgar flower girl Liza Doolittle, is alive and well, and she speaks a little too well. The “sculptor”, the linguist Henry Higgins, has to mold her into a refined lady, dressing her up and teaching her the correct language. But after her successful debut, something goes wrong… The play Pygmalion is still on the stage, as it is a favorite of both directors and audiences. Its first film adaptation was also a huge success: Bernard Shaw wrote the screenplay for the 1938 British film of the same name and won an Oscar for it. This edition is illustrated with stills from the movie. Book 2. Tevye the milkman Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916) was a Jewish writer whose life was closely connected with Ukraine. Thus, the author settled his favorite character, Tevye the Dairyman, a noble and simple-minded, pious and full of contradictions, a connoisseur of people and a lover of natural beauty, in a Ukrainian village of the then Russian Empire. It is not easy for a hardworking father of a large family with seven daughters, and their lives cannot be called happy. However, Tevye’s monologue stories are full of optimism and kindness, and are sprinkled with witticisms. The hero does not change his rule: if there are not enough tears, then one must laugh, even when he tells how the tsarist authorities force him to leave his home. Book 3: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi (1864-1913) was a subtle connoisseur of the poetic word and the human soul, a brilliant storyteller. The writer fully revealed these talents in his masterpiece of Ukrainian literature, the novel Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The story he tells is as old as time. Its protagonists, Ivan and Marichka, have been passionately in love with each other since childhood, but cannot be happy together. Their families are indifferent to the feelings of young people, because they are at odds with each other and are not willing to quench their insignificant passions even for the sake of their children. However, there is one more, perhaps the most important character in the novel: the author managed to transfer to paper both the magical beauty of the Carpathians and the flavor of the Hutsul region, with its legends, beliefs, and symbols that shape the worldview of the Hutsuls. Book 4. The Forest Song The unsurpassed Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) wrote her masterpiece, the drama-extravaganza The Forest Song, in distant lands when she was very homesick. Especially her native Kolodyazhne, where “on a moonlit night I would run alone into the forest and wait for Mavka to appear to me. This image fascinated me for the rest of my life.” That longing, apparently, inspired the poet to tell so painfully about the tragedy of life for those who become empty in their souls, renounce their purest feelings, and extinguish their impulse to create. In fact, by betraying his forest bride, the protagonist betrays himself. Because Mavka is the soul without which a person turns into a werewolf.