Abkhazian Tales (Abkhazskie skazki) / Compiled, edited and translated from the Abkhaz by Kh. S. Bgazhba; illustrations by A. and M. Beletsky. Sukhumi, 1959. In Russian.

Абхазские сказки / составил, обработал и перевёл с абхазского Х. С. Бгажба ; редактор Ф. Искандер ; рисунки художников А. и М. Белецких.
Сухуми : Абхазское государственное издательство [Абгиз], 1959. — 352 с., ил.
Издательский картонажный переплёт с богатым орнаментально-сюжетным тиснёным оформлением в стилизованном кавказском декоративном стиле. Увеличенный формат (около 175×235 мм). С чёрно-белыми иллюстрациями художников А. и М. Белецких в тексте.
Состояние хорошее: общее равномерное возрастное потемнение и пожелтение картонажного переплёта, отдельные пятна и следы загрязнения по передней и задней крышкам, потёртости и заломы по углам и краям, корешок сохранен полностью с незначительным истиранием по верхнему и нижнему краям. Блок крепкий, шитьё прочное, текст и иллюстрации полностью читаемы.
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Sukhumi : Abkhazian State Publishing House [Abgiz], 1959. — 352 pp., illustrations.
Publisher's pictorial paper-over-boards binding richly stamped in stylised Caucasian decorative style. Slightly enlarged octavo format (approximately 175×235 mm). With black-and-white in-text illustrations by the artists A. and M. Beletsky.
Condition good: overall even age-toning and browning of the pictorial boards, scattered spotting and light soiling to front and rear covers, rubbing and creasing to corners and edges, spine fully preserved with minor wear at head and tail. Text-block firm, sewing sound, text and illustrations fully legible throughout.

A handsomely produced provincial Soviet edition of considerable bibliographic and literary interest, gathering Abkhaz folk tales, hero-legends and animal fables compiled, edited and rendered into Russian by Khukhut Solomonovich Bgazhba (1914–1995), the foundational figure of twentieth-century Abkhaz philology, long-time director of the D. I. Gulia Abkhaz Institute of Language, Literature and History, and one of the principal codifiers of the modern Abkhaz literary language. Particular interest attaches to the volume's literary editor: Fazil Abdulovich Iskander (1929–2016), credited on the title-page as редактор. In 1959 Iskander, then aged thirty, was at the very beginning of his literary career — five years before he would publish his first book of verse and a full decade before "Sandro of Chegem" (Сандро из Чегема) would establish him as one of the most important Russian-language prose writers of the second half of the twentieth century. The Sukhumi imprint Abgiz (Абхазское государственное издательство) was the principal publisher of the Abkhazian ASSR, responsible for both Abkhaz-language and Russian-language editions issued from the regional centre on the Black Sea coast; its print runs were comparatively small and its books are difficult to locate outside the Caucasus. The book sits at the productive intersection of Soviet folklore-collecting (the great post-war effort to publish the oral literatures of the smaller peoples of the USSR in Russian translation) and Abkhaz cultural self-fashioning, and is sought after both by collectors of Caucasian ethnographic and folkloric material and, with rapidly growing interest, by collectors of early Iskanderiana.