In a critical preface, Bentley finds all four works to be a Gogolian treatment of love - or the lack of love - and by the same token, thoroughly original works of dramatic art. Also includes a piece on Gamblers by the eminent Polish critic Jan Kott.

    Set one thousand years in the future, it is a witty yet terrifying picture of a future society in which reason is all-conquering and mankind has been enslaved by a dictator called 'the benefactor'. This new study presents both a synthesis of existing criticism and a new reading of the novel. The first section deals with "We" in the context of the Russian Civil War, showing how Zamiatin's contemporaries interpreted it as a satire on life in Soviet Russia. The major trends in the diverse body of modern criticism are then surveyed. The longer second part of the study consists of a detailed reading of the novel based on close textual analysis of the forty 'entries' of its narrator's diary.

    Fish is an expansive, gripping, often controversial story of the intimate fallout of imperial collapse, from one of Russia's most important writers.In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera ("Faith" in Russian) from the desert of Central Asia, to exile in Southern Russia, to a remote forest-bound community of Estonians, to the chaos of Moscow. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, Vera swims against the current of life, countering the adversity and pain she meets with compassion and hope. Suffering through rape, abuse, dislocation and exile, Vera personifies Mother Russia's torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration. Nicknamed "Fish" by her abusive husband, who feels she is cold and unfeeling, Vera in fact discovers she has a powerful gift to alleviate the suffering of others, while she can do little to fend off the adversity that buffets her own life.Aleshkovsky's work is remarkable for his commitment to the realistic novel tradition. Indeed, Fish is the first Russian novel to grapple with post-Soviet colonial otherness without transposing it into a fantastic, post-apocalyptic realm or reducing it to black-and-white conflicts of the popular detective genres. Stylistically, Aleshkovsky s prose most closely resembles the work of Vassily Aksyonov or Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, with its mastery of evocative detail and mystical undercurrents. The male author's choice of a first-person, female narrator (extremely rare in Russia) makes Fish all the more significant.

    All the farces of Russia's greatest dramatist are rendered here in the classic lively translations which audiences and scholars alike applaud on the stage and in the classroom. The blustering, stuttering eloquence of Chekhov's unlikely heroes has endured to shape the voice of contemporary theatre. This voume presents seven minor masterpieces: Harmfulness of Tobacco * Swan Song * The Brute * Marriage Proposal * Summer in the Country * A Wedding * The Celebration.