“Märchen aus Malula” by Rafik Schami, first published in 1997, is a collection of retold Syrian folk fairy tales. The mentioned work is used by the Syrian-born author as an expression of both direct (based on the open criticism of the typical elements of a fairy tale) and indirect (built on numerous modifications of the source text) polemic against original fairy tales. Therefore, the objective of this article is to identify, categorize and finally evaluate the passages of polemical character. The terminology introduced in the phenomenological research of fairy tales by Max Lüthi was used to determine the correlation between the original tales and Schami’s retellings.
