The Malachite Casket is a delightful series of interlinking stories written by Pavel Bazhov (1879-1950). These have served as the theme for cultural groups - Sergei Prokofiev was inspired by these for his ballet The Flower of Stone - and the themes for operas, symphonies and films have originated here. These stories are told to a young boy by a watchman, who lived on top of a mountain in the Ural Mountain region of Russia. The tales are darker and deeper than most Russian tales, exploring and expressing realistic social relations and internal struggles.There is not a single person in Russia who has not heard of The Malachite Box by Pavel Bazhov, who learned the unwritten history of The Urals while working as a boy in the old mines. The life of the celebrated author of well-known Urals tales as well as his books are inseparable from the Urals.