Malachite green colored cation. The oxalate salt is also marketed. The anions have no effect on the color. The intense green color of the cation results from a strong absorption band at 621 nm (extinction coefficient of ). Malachite green is prepared by the condensation of benzaldehyde and dimethylaniline to give leuco malachite green (LMG): Second, this colorless leuco compound, a relative of triphenylmethane, is oxidized to the cation that is MG: A typical oxidizing agent is manganese dioxide. Hydrolysis of MG gives an alcohol: This alcohol is important because it, not MG, traverses cell membranes. Once inside the cell, it is
The Malachite Box total circulation of about 37 million copies. "The Malachite Box" has been republished many times since then. The tales were translated into 64 languages, more than 250 editions in foreign languages were released. The list of languages include English, Hungarian, Italian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Assamese, Kannada. Four stories from "The Malachite Box" were published in the 1943 Moscow magazine "Internatsionalnaya Literatura" in English and French. In 1944 the book was translated from Russian into English by Alan Moray Williams and published by Hutchinson. Bazhov did not know about this translation and found out about it accidentally. In the