In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little does he suspect that this small misdemeanour will have a profound impact on the lives of many other people around him – indirectly even leading to the gravest of crimes. This in turn sets off a long journey towards redemption and rehabilitation.
Published only in 1911, after Tolstoy’s death, The Forged Coupon examines the deep, unpredictable consequences of every human act, revealing the Russian master’s moral preoccupations in the last years of his life, as well as his rejection of Christianity’s simplistic division between good and evil.
The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and often neglecting his family in the process. When, after a small accident, he fails to make the expected recovery, it gradually becomes clear that he is soon to die. Ivan Ilyich then starts to question the futility and barrenness of his previous existence, realizing to his horror, as he grapples with the meaning of life and death, that he is totally alone.
Included in this volume is another celebrated novella by Tolstoy, The Devil, which addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience, providing at the same time a further exploration of human fear and obsession.
Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world’s greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life.
Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy’s last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime. This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today’s generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom.
Filled with dreams of pursuing a career as a poet, the young Alexander Aduev moves from the country to St Petersburg, where he takes up lodgings next to his uncle Pyotr, a shrewd and world-weary businessman. As his ideals are challenged by disappointment in the fields of love, friendship and poetical ambition, Alexander must decide whether to return to the homely values he has left behind or adapt to the ruthless rules and morals of city life.
Told in the author’s trademark humorous style and presented in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, The Same Old Story – Goncharov’s first novel, preceding his masterpiece Oblomov by twelve years – is a study of lost illusions and rude spiritual awakening in the modern world.
The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing chaos that occurs. This is Gogol’s humour at its best, where the most irrelevant-seeming details and turns of phrase take on a bizarre life of their own. Ivan Krylov’s Panegyric in Memory of My Grandfather has an ingenuous narrator praise the nobility and modesty of a landowner whose actions prove him to be otherwise. The two tales by Mikhail Saltykov are satirical attacks on civil servants and Russia’s autocracy. The final piece, Tolstoy’s Ivan the Fool, is a playful and allegorical critique of contemporary Russian society. Together, they represent some of Russia’s finest comic writing before the twentieth century.
Based on Dovlatov’s actual experience of being a prison guard in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, and full of comic and humane detail, The Zone depicts the absurd day-to-day life of a camp in an insightful and unusual way, challenging commonly held perceptions of the relations between incarcerators and the incarcerated.
A priceless chronicle of its time which highlights universal themes, Dovlatov’s genre-defying novel also provides moments of high entertainment and humour, rendered in his characteristically sharp, concise and sardonic style.
Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the items he finds inside take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them. A poplin shirt evokes a story of courtship and marriage, a pair of boots calls up the hilarious conclusion to an official banquet, two pea-green crêpe socks bring back memories of his attempt to become a black-market racketeer, while a double-breasted suit reminds him of when he was approached by the KGB to spy on a Swedish writer.
Imbued with a comic nostalgia and overlaid with Dovlatov’s characteristically dark-edged humour and wry power of observation, The Suitcase is a profoundly human, delightfully ironic novel from one of the finest satirists of the twentieth century.
An unsuccessful writer and an inveterate alcoholic, Boris Alikhanov is running out of money and has recently divorced from his wife Tatyana, who intends to emigrate to the West with their daughter Masha. The prospect of a summer job as a tourist guide at the Pushkin Hills preserve offers him hope of bringing back some balance into his existence, but during his stay in the rural estate of Mikhaylovskoye, Alikhanov’s life continues to unravel.
Populated with unforgettable characters, such as Alikhanov’s fellow guides Mitrofanov and Pototsky and the KGB officer Belyaev, and presented here for the first time in the English language, Pushkin Hills is arguably Dovlatov’s most personal work and a poignant portrayal of the Russian attitude towards life and art.
Among Dostoevsky’s later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady – the illegitimate son of the landowner Versilov and the maid Sofia Andreyevna – as he struggles to find his place in society and “become a Rothschild” against the background of 1870s Russia, a nation still tethered to its old systems and values but shaken up by the new ideological currents of socialism and nihilism.
Both a Bildungsroman and a novel of ideas, dealing with themes such as the relationship between fathers and sons and the role of money in modern society, The Adolescent – here presented in a brand-new translation by Dora O’Brien – shows Dostoevsky at his finest as a social commentator and observer of the workings of a young man’s mind.
A secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official’s son, with a view to spying on the father and, ultimately, assassinating him. But the young man entrusted with the task – an ailing, world-weary “nobody” – seized with the purposelessness of life and a sense of his own impending death, gradually becomes disillusioned with his mission, and decides to embark on a new path which will lead him to tragedy.
Combining psychological detail with a strong sense of place and time, The Story of a Nobody bears all the hallmarks of Chekhov’s genius, and perfectly captures the political and social tensions of its day.
In the Twilight, the third collection of short stories compiled by Anton Chekhov himself, was his first major success and won him the prestigious Pushkin Prize when it was published in 1888. This volume represents a clear milestone in the writer’s passage from the youthful Antosha Chekhonte, author of slight comic sketches, to the mature master of the short-story genre.
This edition presents the sixteen tales of the original collection – ranging from well-known and acknowledged gems such as ‘Agafya’ and ‘On the Road’ to others which will be fresh even to many seasoned readers of Chekhov – in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin, providing an invaluable glimpse into a pivotal moment in the writer’s literary career.
Contains: ‘In the Twilight’, ‘Dreams’, ‘A Trivial Occurrence’, ‘A Bad Business’, ‘At Home’, ‘The Witch’, ‘Verochka’, ‘In Court’, ‘A Restless Guest’, ‘The Requiem’, ‘On the Road’, ‘Misfortune’, ‘An Event’, ‘Agafya’, ‘Enemies’, ‘A Nightmare’, ‘On Easter Eve’.
Begun in 1920 while Bulgakov was employed in a hospital in the remote Caucasian outpost of Vladikavkaz, and continued when he started working for a government literary department in Moscow, Notes on a Cuff is a series of journalistic sketches which show the young doctor trying to embark on a literary career among the chaos of war, disease, politics and bureaucracy.
Stylistically brilliant and brimming with humour and literary allusion, Notes on a Cuff is presented here in a new translation, along with a collection of other short pieces by Bulgakov, many of them – such as ‘The Cockroach’ and ‘A Dissolute Man’ – published for the first time in the English language.
Contains: ‘Notes on a Cuff’, ‘The Fire of the Khans’, ‘The Crimson Island’, ‘A Week of Enlightenment’, ‘The Unusual Adventures of a Doctor’, ‘Psalm’, ‘Moonshine Lake’, ‘Makar Devushkin’s Story’, ‘A Scurvy Character’, ‘The Murderer’, ‘The Cockroach’, ‘A Dissolute Man’.
Ten-Year Anniversary Edition – newly revised and updated
Russia’s literary world is shaken to its foundations when a mysterious gentleman – a professor of black magic – arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a bizarre retinue of servants. It soon becomes clear that he is the Devil himself, come to wreak havoc among the cultural elite of a disbelieving capital. But the Devil’s mission quickly becomes entangled with the fate of the Master – a man who has turned his back on his former life and taken refuge in a lunatic asylum – and his past lover, Margarita.
Both a satirical romp and a daring analysis of the nature of good and evil, innocence and guilt, The Master and Margarita is the crowning achievement of one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century.
This collection of Pushkin’s stories begins with ‘The Queen of Spades’, perhaps the most celebrated short story in Russian literature. The young Hermann, while watching some friends gambling, hears a rumour of how an officer’s grandmother is always able to predict the three winning cards in a game. He becomes obsessed with the woman and her seemingly mystical powers, and seeks to extract the secret from her at any cost.
This volume, part of a new series of the complete works of Pushkin in English, also includes ‘Dubrovsky’, the story of a man’s desire to avenge himself after his land is unjustly taken from him by an aristocrat; ‘The Negro of Peter the Great’, a tale inspired by Pushkin’s maternal grandfather; and the unfinished story ‘Egyptian Nights’, a meditation on poetry and the poet. Together, they represent some of the most striking and enduring pieces of Pushkin’s prose fiction.
The full list of stories contained is as follows: ‘The Queen of Spades’, ‘Kirdzhali’, ‘The Negro of Peter the Great’, ‘The Guests Were Arriving at the Dacha…’, ‘A Novel in Letters’, ‘Notes of a Young Man’, ‘My Fate Is Sealed: I Am Getting Married’, ‘A Fragment’, ‘In the Corner of a Small Square’, ‘Roslavlev’, ‘A Novel at a Caucasian Spa’, ‘Dubrovsky’, ‘A Tale of Roman life’, ‘Maria Schoning’, A Russian Pelham’, ‘We Were Spending the Evening at Princess D.’s Dacha’, ‘Egyptian Nights’, ‘In 179– I was Returning’, ‘The Last of the Lineage of Joan of Arc’
Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Caucasian struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who accept him but never put their trust in him – and so Murat must find another way to end the struggle.
Tolstoy knew as he was writing this, his last work of fiction, that it would not be published in his lifetime, and so gave an uncompromising portrayal of the Russians’ faults and the nature of the rebels’ struggle. In the process, he shows a mastery of style and an understanding of Chechnya that still carries great resonance today.
Fathers and Children, arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 – the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing traditional values and institutions, providing a trenchant critique of the established order.
Turgenev’s masterpiece investigates the growing nihilist movement of mid-nineteenth-century Russia – a theme which was to influence Dostoevsky and many other European writers – in a universal and often hilarious story of generational conflict and the clash between the old and the new.
This evocative account of the life of the Renaissance’s greatest figure traces Leonardo’s early development as an artist and court figure to his final years in exile, portraying his loves and sufferings, as well as his intellectual curiosity and tireless loyalty to his ideals. But it is the background to his famous painting La Gioconda and his relationship with the mysterious Florentine woman who modelled for it that are at the heart of the novel – here presented for the first time in an unabridged translation. The result is an engrossing and unforgettable read.
An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of Russian literature that inspired one of Freud’s most important essays, Leonardo da Vinci also offers an illuminating snapshot of the society of the period – beset with intrigue and religious and social tension – and a host of memorable historical figures such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Machiavelli, Savonarola and the infamous Borgias.
Inspired by real events and centring on the figure of Pelageya Vlasova – the mother of the title – and her son Pavel, Gorky’s masterpiece describes the brutal life of ordinary Russian factory workers in the years leading to the 1905 Revolution and explores the rise of the proletariat, the role of women in society and the lower classes’ struggle for self-affirmation.
A book of the utmost importance, in the words of Lenin, and a landmark in Russian literature, The Mother – here presented in a brilliant new version by Hugh Aplin, the first English translation in almost a century – will enchant modern readers both for its historical significance and its intrinsic value as a work of art.
On his travels through the wild mountainous terrain of the Caucasus, the narrator of A Hero of Our Time chances upon the veteran soldier and storyteller Maxim Maximych, who relates to him the dubious exploits of his former comrade Pechorin. Engaging in various acts of duelling, contraband, abduction and seduction, Pechorin, an archetypal Byronic anti-hero, combines cynicism and arrogance with melancholy and sensitivity.
Causing an uproar in Russia when it was first published in 1840, Lermontov’s brilliant, seminal study of contemporary society and the nihilistic aspect of Romanticism – accompanied here by the unfinished novel Princess Ligovskaya – remains compelling to this day.
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