Isaac Babel is a wonderful Russian short story writer of the first half of the twentieth century, the author of the poignant ‘Cavalry’ and the immortal ‘Odessa Tales’, the literary father of the famous Benny Krik. In his works, Babel paints a romantic world of noble thieves and smugglers, talks about his childhood and the civil war, which he went through with Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army.

The Cherry Orchard was first produced by the Moscow Art Theatre on Chekhov's last birthday, January 17, 1904. Since that time it has become one of the most critically admired and performed plays in the Western world, a high comedy whose principal theme, the passing of the old semifeudal order, is symbolized in the sale of the cherry orchard owned by Madame Ranevsky.

The novel *Oblomov* represents the pinnacle of I. A. Goncharov’s literary career. Published in 1859, it elicited a mixed response from critics. Goncharov not only portrayed a remarkable and paradoxical type of Russian character but also turned the name into a household term, defining this specific lifestyle as ‘Oblomovism.’ Some viewed Oblomov as a symbol of Russia’s stagnation and a sign of...

A.S. Pushkin entered Russian culture not only as a great Poet, but also as a wonderful prose writer and playwright. This volume includes the most significant and well-known prose works of the author, in which he appears as a historian, chronicler, subtle psychologist (expert on the human soul) and an excellent storyteller: 'Arap of Peter the Great', 'Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin',...

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years,...

A.I. Kuprin began writing the story 'The Pit' in 1909 and completed the work six years later. The book about the life of prostitutes evoked more condemnation than sympathy or understanding. The author was accused of immorality and excessive naturalism. The attitude to the story by Leo Tolstoy (by the way, the author of the scandalous 'Kreutzer Sonata') was sharply negative. ... And as if in...

Pushkin's turn to prose was a deliberate step, preceded by reflections on the nature of verbal art. And it is quite possible that the interest of the first Russian poet in prose was based on a sense of the unprecedented seriousness of the tasks facing Russian literature. The collection includes works by A. S. Pushkin: 'Arap of Peter the Great', 'Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin', 'The...

It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called a demonstration and summation of the entire movement. The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose-replete with puns, parodies, and allusions-as well as its rich characterization and broad humor, have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary...

Between 1841 and 1844, Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre of detective fiction with three mesmerizing stories of a young French eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin. Introducing to literature the concept of applying reason to solving crime, these tales brought Poe fame and fortune.

Böll’s well-known opposition to fascism and war informs this moving story of a single day in the life of traumatized soldier Robert Faehmel, scion of a family of successful Cologne architects, as he struggles to return to ordinary life after the Second World War. An encounter with a war-time nemesis, now a power in the reconstruction of Germany, forces him to confront private memories and the...

The Soviet and post-Soviet world, with its untold multitude of crimes, is a natural breeding ground for ghost stories. No one writes them more movingly than Russian author Sergei Lebedev, who in this stunning volume probes a collective guilty conscience marked by otherworldliness and the denial of misdeeds. These eleven tales share a mystical topography in which the legacy of totalitarian...