The eight contributions to this collection, written by members of the ‘Narratology? research group in Hamburg and by external experts, contain the basic categories of Russian and Czech narratology. These became significant for the development of international narratology or for the further development potential of the theory. The studied concepts include ‘fable’ and ‘subject’, ‘subject development’, ‘event’ and ‘fictional worlds’. The comparative studies explore and discuss Russian composition theory, the author theories of Slavic functionalism, formalistic film and theater concepts and narrative semantics in the conception of Prague structuralism. The spectrum of the discussed theorists includes the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky and the formalism-leaning theorist Michail Petrovsky, the Czech structuralist Jan Muka?ovský, Felix Vodi?ka and Lubomír Doležel as well as Yuri Lotman, the central figure of the Moscow-Tartu school.