Unknown Andersen: fairy tales and stories
Unknown Andersen: fairy tales and stories. Per from Danes. Olga Drobot, Nora Kiyamova, Elena Redova, Nina Fedorova. M.: ED «Cities», 2025 (NordBook Scandinavian Line) 12+ ISBN 978-5-907982-05-5
«An unknown Andersen: fairy tales and stories» is a collection of recent works by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) that reveal new aspects of the creative personality of a famous writer, not only the creator of immortal children’s fairy tales, but also the author of novels, stories and stories addressed primarily to an adult reader. The book included sixteen works that combined beautiful and tragic happiness and grief, love and death, and revealed the philosophical view of the writer of the world, the sense of tragedy, and, at the same time, the wisdom of being subject to the eternal divine law. The tales are published in modern translations produced by the masters of the domestic translation school, Nora Kiyamova, Nina Fedorova, Elena Redova, and Olga Drobot.
Tatiana Perminova, an art designer of the book: I was faced with the difficult task of designing the magical fairy tales of a very famous child writer (who a priori is considered to be childish), but who are more of a serious, adult reader. I tried to make a gifted, beautiful publication that should cause pleasant emotions, but at the same time the texts themselves make you think deeply and may even cause pain. That’s the duality I had to pass on.
Tatiana Perminova, an art designer of the book: I took the classic elements of storymaking and romance stories — big broad fields, letter, venzel, small graphics designed to make the model easier, air, less strict, and a little more light-minded. At the same time, the lines in the lower field of the strip and the emphasis on the large colonic, like the step around it, make it more difficult and more rigid and structural. There are also illustrations in the book — the detailed and developed watermelons of Oscar Clover, an artist with a difficult destiny never published in Russian editions of Andersen’s fairy tales. They are given on a colour panel as a unique application to this publication.
Tatiana Perminova, an art designer of the book: My main task was to make them as large as possible, to restore beauty, and to attract the attention of the reader. Classical illustrations also influenced design — I gave up very modern techniques and fonts and tried to shape the book in a classical way, but with modern details. For example, when it comes to venzeles, which I use in letters, endings, and as an adornment of the strip, their «digitality» is not random. I was struggling with the temptation to use classical handwritten pens, but I realized they were giving a book too old-fashioned, even vintage. I wanted a new look, but at the same time it was necessary to be careful about the material, not to suppress this bright new delicate foundation.
Tatiana Perminova, an art designer of the book: Printing and a small photo of the writer play a major role in the cover, which is repeated before the title in its original form. Andersen doesn’t have a face because we don’t know this man yet, but we’ll get to know him a little better when we read this book. I didn’t want to give Clever an illustration of the cover, because their detail and chamberability are more suitable for looking inside the block, and when we open the book, we see a lot of detailed forzac. I used the laconicness of the cover as a device to cut off the children’s audience, but right after that, the reader opened a curtain in the magical country of fairy tales, because Oscar Clever was a theatre artist.
