Russia and its World
Russia in all its aspects has always exerted a pull on me. Its history, art, music, food, landscapes, dress in all varied ethnic glory, and, above all, its literature have a special access to my attention. A major challenge is Russia’s colossal size and diversity of geography. Another continual surprise is the number of its distinctive peoples, each with unique folkways and histories. Russia has had some epic totalitarian regimes over its long history — but it also has been the home of some of the world’s greatest, most creative, and most influential anarchist philosophers. Russia is big enough and complex enough to handle all sorts of contradictions and paradoxes — and to claim them all proudly (and fatalistically, a classic Russian trait).
Over the years I have noticed that my store has become home to a great range of literature, fiction and nonfiction, of the Russian soul and mind and heart. I share it here and may update it as often as possible.
Russian Stories [Everyman's Library]
Russian Stories [Everyman's Library]
ABOUT RUSSIAN STORIES
Two centuries of short stories by twenty-five titans of Russian literature, from Pushkin and Gogol to Tatyana Tolstaya and Svetlana Alexievich–in the beautifully jacketed Pocket Classics series.
Russian Stories rounds up marvelous short stories by all the Russian heavyweights, including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Bulgakov, and Nabokov, and continuing up to contemporary writers such as Tatyana Tolstaya and the recent Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich. There is no similar one-volume collection of the best of the Russian greats in English, and especially none that include as many women as this one does, including a story by the recently rediscovered Teffi, who was widely hailed a century ago in Russia as “the female Chekhov.” From the fate-changing storms that sweep through Alexander Pushkin’s “The Blizzard” and Leo Tolstoy’s “The Snow Storm” to the political whirlwind of perestroika that shapes Vladimir Sorokin’s 1985 story “Start of the Season” to the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union as experienced by ordinary people in Alexievich’s “Landscape of Loneliness,” these riveting stories chronicle not only the particular dramas and upheavals of the Russian people, but also the tribulations and triumphs of the human spirit.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Alexander Pushkin, “The Blizzard”
Mikhail Lermontov, “The Fatalist”
Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat”
Leo Tolstoy, “The Snow Storm”
Ivan Turgenev, “Living Relic”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”
Anastasiya Mirovich, “Elsa”
Anton Chekhov, “The Bishop”
Ivan Bunin, “The Gentleman from San Francisco”
Teffi, “The Quiet Backwater”
Mikhail Bulgakov, “The Adventures of Chichikov”
Osip Mandelstam, “Music in Pavlosk”
Isaac Babel, “Dolgushov’s Death”
Marina Tsvetaeva, “Life Insurance”
Nina Berberova, “The Big City”
Vladimir Nabokov, “The Sisters Vane”
Andrei Bitov, “Geghard”
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, “Immortal Love”
Vladimir Sorokin, “The Start of the Season”
Nina Sadur, “Wicked Girls”
Marina Palei, “Rendez-vous”
Nina Gabrielyan, “Happiness”
Ludmila Ulitskaya, “Angel”
Tatyana Tolstaya, “Sweet Shura”
Svetlana Alexievich, from Landscape of Loneliness