Enchantment (54 page)

Acknowledgments

Since this novel is set in milieux that are unfamiliar to me, I have relied on various sources, especially:

Pinhas Sadeh,
Jewish Folktales,
trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Anchor, 1989; 441 pp.). For stories and motifs used in
Enchantment
, especially the story of the Sky, the Rat, and the Well.

Charles Downing,
Russian Tales and Legends
(H. Z. Walck, 1968; 215 pp.). For stories and motifs used in
Enchantment.

Vladimir Propp,
Morphology of the Folktale,
trans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968; 158 pp.). The pivotal book whose conclusions Ivan is testing.

Hillel Halkin, “Feminizing Jewish Studies,”
Commentary
105:2 (February 1998, pp. 39–45). For the rhetoric of Jewish feminism.

Jerome Blum,
Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961; 656 pp.). For a rough idea of how the Russian people were governed before the dominance of the Rus’.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ed.
Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law
(M. E. Sharpe, 1992). Many articles were very helpful in grounding my speculations about religion and law in the imaginary kingdom of Taina.

Bruce Cockburn, for the album Ivan listens to in chapter 14. Sharp-eyed readers will note that
The Charity of Night
was released in 1997, rather too late for Ivan to listen to it in 1992. But my opinion is that if you can accept the idea of Ivan and Katerina passing back and forth between 1992 and 890, there should be no problem with Cockburn’s music traveling only four years back in time. Think of it as the sound track for that scene.

Sam Kinison, whose screaming comedy is sorely missed, died only a few months before the 747 returned from Taina. But this novel is a fantasy, and in that fantasy Kinison is still alive.

Alexander Pushkin,
Eugene Oregin,
trans. James E. Falen (Oxford University Press, 240 pp.). The best of the translations, I found it with the help of Douglas Hofstadter,
Le Ton Beau de Marot
.

I owe thanks to many individuals for helping me create this novel or prepare it for publication, particularly:

To Derryl Yeager, for the idea of Sleeping Beauty waking up today, and to Nik Gasdik, for putting the story in Russia.

To Krista Maxwell, for details and corrections in my depiction of Russia in several centuries, and for everything in this book that is correct about my use of Old Church Slavonic and proto-Slavonic; the errors that remain are my own, despite Krista’s best efforts. Ivan is especially in Krista’s debt for the wonderful food Sophia served to him; I had no reason to change Krista’s list, so there it stands in her words.

To Linda Bass for the correct spelling of
mohel
.

To D’Ann Stoddard, for research on making gunpowder.

To Clark and Kathy Kidd and to Mark and Margaret Park, for once more opening their homes to me, and for countless other helps, only some of which can be repaid.

To Kathleen Bellamy, who reads my novels last, to catch those pernicious errors that have evaded all other eyes.

To Scott Allen, who keeps the tools of my trade cleaned and oiled.

To Kristine Card, Kathy Kidd, Peter Johnson, Jay Parry, and Robert Stoddard, who read the chapters as they came along.

To Lisa Collins, for a superb and sympathetic job of copy editing.

To Amy Stout and Kuo-Yu Liang, whose patience passes understanding.

To Barbara Bova, who makes it possible for me to live from the proceeds of this hobby of mine.

To Erin Absher, for Baba Tila’s real identity and for being our help in all good things.

And, above all, to Kristine and to our children, Geoffrey, Emily, Charlie Ben, Zina, and Erin Louisa, whose lives are the meaning of my life, and who have made me, not yet a virtuous man, but one who knows what virtue is and yearns for it.

O
RSON
S
COTT
C
ARD
burst on the scene in the early 1980s as a short-story writer, whose highly praised work appeared frequently in
Omni
and other magazines. He is the award-winning author of
Magic Street, Ender’s Game,
and the Alvin Maker series, among other novels. Card lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Also By Orson Scott Card
Published by Del Rey Books

ENCHANTMENT

MAGIC STREET

Enchantment
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

2005 Del Rey Books Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright © 1999 by Orson Scott Card

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1999.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Golden Mountain Music Corp. for permission to reprint excerpts from the lyrics of “Birmingham Shadows,” words by Bruce Cockburn. © 1997 Golden Mountain Music Corp. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005924893

Del Rey Books website address:
www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-48450-5

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