#15 – Ruslan and Ludmila, Alexander Pushkin
Have you ever wondered why Pushkin’s "Mermaid was sitting on the branches?" The image of a mermaid, which is half-woman, half-fish is a legacy of Western culture. They are used to represent a mermaid with a fish tail, but mermaid from Russian folklore and western mermaid are completely different characters. Most often, the Little Mermaid in the Russian tradition portrayed as stout, beautiful, young woman with a pale face and with long green hair. Her main entertainment is sitting on the branches of trees and combing her hair.
#14 – The little prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
All the heroes of fairy tales have their prototypes. The image of the prince is deeply autobiographical - it is Exupery in childhood. Little prince loves and protects Rose - his beautiful but capricious wife, Hispanic Consuelo. A Fox is Sylvia Reinhardt, a good friend of Saint-Exupery, who helped him in difficult times.
#13 – The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne
It is known that Jules Verne used to write his novels based on their scientific knowledge. But in the "The Mysterious Island", he deliberately omitted one detail: in the description of the method of manufacture of nitroglycerine to blow up the granite rock there was no catalyst (platinum), without which the whole idea would not work.
#12 – The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, J.R.R Tolkien
Tolkien wanted to write only a fairy tale to read his own sons, but got so carried away that he had received a complete book with maps and illustrations. At first there was only one handwritten copy of the book that the professor read sometimes gave his friends and disciples. Thanks to one of his students, the book was published and also was continued later.
Another interesting fact is that the reviewer for this book became a boy of ten, the son of the director of the publishing house, where it was published for the first time.
#11 – Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The famous phrase "Open Sesame" is translated into Russian should sound like "Open Sesame" that translated from Russian means “Open Semsem.”
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