Anuja Shukla

"Most of us grow up not oblivious of traditional folklore and fairy tales, which subconsciously shape our values and ideals as children. A massive chunk of these folktales deals with the stories of locked away princess protagonists, described to be exceptionally beautiful and who spend their life in distress only to be relieved by marriage at the end. She would recounted to be blessed with virtues like kindness, subservience, a beautiful passive trophy to be won by a warrior prince, whereas the female antagonist would be an outspoken self-reliant woman of actions; someone who can defy fate and snatch her fancies from it, and is definitely unattractive. This book is an attempt to break such stereotypes and it contains retold versions of three such stories from three different cultures,

"The Mermaid"- which is a retold version of an Irish folktale, 'Lady of Gollerus', "The Singing Princess", that of the Spanish folktale 'The Ugly Princess', and "The Tree-Top Girl", a version of the Romanian folktale called 'Wild-Rose', taken from Andrew Lang's collection, 'Crimson Fairy book'. Although the names of these places aren't directly mentioned, each story contains little inklings of the region belong to- for example, the native language of a particular land, or a salient feature of its ethnography.

The meta-narrative or the story of 'Nell' is loosely based on the American journalist 'Nellie Bly', and her contribution to an asylum, as well as her journey around the world in 72 days. The story is structured in a fashion where Nell as a fearless woman goes to rescue her brother."