“Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology.” “But what does she have to do with a writer’s journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother?” “Or with a trio of women who decide in their old age to spend a week together at a hotel spa?” By the end of Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel, the answers are revealed. Her story is shot through with spellbinding, magic, involving a gambling triumph, sudden death on the golf course, a long-lost grandchild, an invasion of starlings, and wartime flight, the consequences of which are revealed only decades later