About the novel

The Strange Adventures of Hlapich the Apprentice (Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića) is a children’s novel by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, and is one of the most significant pieces of Croatian children’s literature. During the first hundred years of its existence, it was published over 130 times, which makes it the most widely distributed and also the most frequently translated Croatian novel. It has been translated into more than twenty languages.

The author, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, wrote it between 5 May and 13 October 1912. It was published by Hrvatski pedagoško-književni zbor [the Croatian Pedagogical-Literary Assembly] in June 1913 as the 56^th book of the sequence Knjižnica za mladež (Youth Library). The editor was Josip Škavić, and the book was illustrated by Nasta Šenoa-Rojc.

The author intended the novel for 6- to 8-year-old readers. Hlapich’s trip lasts seven days, and it happens in 1885. There is no geographic location of the story.

Eleven-year-old Hlapich is an apprentice in Master Mrkonja’s shoemaking workshop. The master shoemaker is oftentimes unfair to Hlapich: once, he accuses the boy of making boots too tight for a rich man’s son, so Hlapich decides to break in the boots and with this in mind runs out into the wide world. The house dog, Bundaš, joins him. Hlapich meets different people: an old milkman, whom he helps deliver the milk, little Marko whom he assists in finding some lost geese, and some stonecutters by the road. One rainy night, the boy seeks shelter under a bridge where he finds a dark man. After waking up the next morning, he discovers that the dark man has stolen the boots. Determined to get them back, he sets off after the thief. On his way, he meets Gita, an 11-year-old acrobat and juggler who is trying to catch up with her circus. Curiously enough, someone stole a box from her that morning, too. Hlapich and Gita agree to travel together. They come across a group of people working in a hayfield, and they both take day labour jobs there. In the middle of the night, flames break out in a barn in the village belonging to Bad Grga and his mother. While the villagers are hesitating, Hlapich climbs onto the roof and puts out the fire. But then he falls into the attic, and lands on Bad Grga’s secret stash of stolen goods which includes his boots, as well as Gita’s and the other villagers’ belongings. The villagers want revenge, but Hlapich promises Grga’s mother to warn her son about the peril that awaits him. Hlapich and Gita continue their expedition. They meet some shepherds at the crossroads, and while they are roasting corncobs with them, a horse-drawn carriage with broken reins thunders by. Hlapich manages to stop the horses and discovers that Bad Grga and the dark man are in the carriage. The boy mends their reins, and gives Grga his mother’s message. After spending the night in the village, Hlapich and Gita go to a town fair. At the fair, they help an old basket weaver sell his merchandise, and they work for the merry-go-round owner. Later that night, they overhear the dark man’s plan to steal Marko’s cow. Hlapich is determined to alert Marko and his mother. On the way to Marko’s house, Hlapich and Gita come across Master Mrkonja who had been robbed and tied to a tree somewhere in the woods. He had been saved by Bad Grga, who had repented, released Mrkonja and became an honest man at last. Master Mrkonja, Hlapich and Gita reach Marko’s house just in time to tell the tenants about the danger. However, the dark man probably dies on his way by slipping and falling into an abyss. Master Mrkonja takes Hlapich and Gita to his house. It turns out that Gita is, in fact, Master Mrkonja’s long-lost daughter. In the end, Hlapich and Gita grow up, marry, have four children and three apprentices of their own, and they all take pleasure in Hlapich’s tales of his past adventures.

The Strange Adventures of Hlapich the Apprentice was warmly received by both readers and critics; for example, A. G. Matoš called it a classic soon after it appeared. However, certain historic and other circumstances were not favourable for Hlapich the Apprentice. Only a year after it was first published, the First World War began, and the second edition by the publisher St. Kugli left Hlapich with no illustrations for 20 long years. After the Second World War, but only in 1951, a new edition of Hlapich was published by Sarajevo Svjetlost. An article by Maja Bošković-Stulli, which appeared in 1967, cast some doubt on the realistic orientation of the text, and a question arose: could Hlapich the Apprentice be a fairy tale? The new perspective had a deep and misleading influence on critical reception, on illustrators and on further editions. In 1997, Milan Blažeković made a full animated feature film of the novel, and a Spanish producer made an animated series of twenty-six 30-minute episodes based on the film in 2006.

The situation has changed in recent years. A critical edition of The Strange Adventures of Hlapich the Apprentice was published in 2010 as part of a critical edition of the Collected Works of Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić (ed. Vinko Brešić).  In 2013, the Croatian Association of Researchers in Children’s Literature initiated and organized Hlapich 2013, which included over a hundred various events all over Croatia during the entire year, in celebration of the centennial of the appearance of the novel. An international research conference, From the Strange to the Wondrous took place in Slavonski Brod in April 2013. In addition, Silvije Petranović made a full-length feature film entitled Šegrt Hlapić  [Hlapich the Apprentice], and the new Croatian edition of Hlapich for child readers, based on the original manuscript, and with illustrations by Josef Lada, which the author herself approved of, appeared towards the end of the Hlapich year. It still attracts new translations into other languages. Thus, the novel lives on.