T.D. Kokoszka grew up in Texas with a Jewish mother and a Polish-American father. While he was aware of roots going back to Eastern Europe from both families, he found it hard to learn very much about them. He knew that Polish people would whack one another with palm leaves around Easter, and he knew that his great-grandmother purportedly believed in forest spirits known as borowy. However, it wasn't until he was in his teens that he became vaguely aware of an ancient people known as the Slavs who gave rise to the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Slovakian, Slovene, and Czech languages. It quickly became clear to him that this was a family of cultures currently under-represented in popular culture, and even in western scholarship. Not simply a regurgitation of scholarship from the Soviet period - and presenting new analyses by using previously neglected resources - Bogowie: A Study of Eastern Europe's Ancient Gods offers one of the most painstaking scholarly reconstructions of Slavic paganism. These new resources include not only an overview of folklore from many different Slavic countries but also comparisons with Ossetian culture and Mordvin culture, as well as a series of Slavic folktales that Kokoszka analyzes in depth, often making the case that the narratives involved are mythological and shockingly ancient. Readers will recognize many European folktale types and possibly learn to look at these folktales differently after reading this book.

本作は、西欧が見過ごしてきたスラブ神話の深淵を、情熱的な再構築で現代に蘇らせた一冊です。著者のルーツから始まった探索は、単なる民俗学を超え、東欧の精神に根ざした古の神々の鼓動を鮮烈に描き出します。オセットやモルドヴィン文化との比較を交えた野心的な視座は、未踏の領域を切り拓く知的な興奮に満ちています。 慣れ親しんだ童話を「失われた神話」として解読する分析は、文学的な驚きに溢れています。物語の裏に潜む古の信仰体系に触れる時、読者の世界観は一変するでしょう。忘れ去られた神々を呼び覚ますこの書は、東欧の魂と対話するための、最も誠実で熱い道標なのです。