And in places what poetry! . . . I still haven't recovered."More than a century and a half later, Nikolai Gogol's stories continue to delight readers the world over. Now a stunning new translation--from an award-winning team of translators--presents these stories in all their inventive, exuberant glory to English-speaking readers. For the first time, the best of Gogol's short fiction is brought together in a single volume: from the colorful Ukrainian tales that led some critics to call him "the Russian Dickens" to the Petersburg stories, with their black humor and wonderfully demented attitude toward the powers that be. All of Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know.These fantastic, comic, utterly Russian characters have dazzled generations of readers and had a profound influence on writers such as Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Now they are brilliantly rendered in the first new translation in twenty-five years--one that is destined to become the definitive edition of Gogol's most important stories.Contains:-St. John's Eve-The Night Before Christmas-The Terrible Vengeance-Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt-Old World Landowners-Viy-The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich-Nevsky Prospect-The Diary of a Madman-The Nose-The Carriage-The Portrait-The Overcoat

    But soon Bazarov’s outspoken rejection of authority and social conventions touches off quarrels, misunderstandings, and romantic entanglements that will utterly transform the Kirsanov household and reflect the changes taking place across all of nineteenth-century Russia. Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world. Introduction by Jane Costlow

      Considered by many the greatest short story writer, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. From characteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as “The Huntsman” and the tour de force “A Boring Story,” to his best-known stories such as “The Lady with the Little Dog” and his own personal favorite, “The Student,” Chekhov’s short fiction possesses the transcendent power of art to awe and change the reader. This monumental edition, expertly translated, is especially faithful to the meaning of Chekhov’s prose and the unique rhythms of his writing, giving modern readers an authentic sense of his style and a true understanding of his greatness.Contains: The death of a clerk --Small fry --The huntsman --The malefactor --Panikhida --Anyuta --Easter night --Vanka --Sleepy --A boring story --Gusev --Peasant women --The fidget --In exile --Ward No. 6 --The black monk --Rothschild's fiddle --The student --Anna on the neck --The house with the mezzanine --The man in a case --Gooseberries --A medical case --The darling --On official business --The lady with the little dog --At Christmastime --In the ravine --The bishop --The fiancée.

    Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of freezing rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice — on the eve of Revolution — is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

    The central character in this work is a Grand Inquisitor who arrests Jesus. A Grand Inquisitor, or Inquisitor Generalis in German is the individual who leads an Inquisition, just like Spanish Dominican Tomas de Torquemada who was the official in charge of the Spanish Inquisition.

    Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an ‘awkward mixture of fact and fiction’, generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and color. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person’s emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy’s maturity.

    One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the “cancerous” Soviet police state.

    Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.

    In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories and passion of Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.

    The plot is similar: a middle-aged man wedding an unattractive widow in order to indulge his paedophilic obsession with her daughter.However, The Enchanter has an utterly different atmosphere, as time, place and even names remain a mystery. Nabokov transforms his protagonist's attempts to lull his twelve-year-old step-daughter into a state of 'enchantment' into a graceful, chilling fairytale.

    One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller.Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.

    History, culture, and politics are blended and juxtaposed; weather reports, current news, fashions and psychology jostle together with people from Petersburg society in an exhilarating search for the identity of a city and, ultimately, Russia itself. 'The one novel that sums up the whole of Russia.'—Anthony Burgess

    "The Quiet Don") is 4-volume epic novel by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The 1st three volumes were written from 1925 to '32 & published in the Soviet magazine October in 1928–32. The 4th volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the 1st three volumes appeared under this title in 1934. The novel is considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature in the 20th century. It depicts the lives & struggles of Don Cossacks during WWI, the Russian Revolution & Russian Civil War. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The authorship of the novel is contested by some literary critics & historians, who believe it wasn't entirely written by Sholokhov. However, following the discovery of the manuscript, the consensus is that the work is, in fact, Sholokhov’s.

    Six eager interns—they saw themselves as modern saviors-to-be.   They came from the top of their medical school class  to the bottom of the hospital staff to serve a  year in the time-honored tradition, racing to answer  the flash of on-duty call lights and nubile  nurses. But only the Fat Man—the Clam, all-knowing resident—could sustain them in their struggle to survive, to stay sane, to love and even to be doctors when their harrowing year was done.

    Stephen Pearl's new translation, the first major English-language publication of Oblomov in more than fifty years, succeeds exquisitely to introduce this astonishing and endearing novel to a new generation of readers.