Again, the lure of the Dover Thrift Book catches me...
This time, it is "Great Russian Short
Stories." Featured here are some of the
heavy hitters in Russian literature from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Dostoevsky
and others.
Some are very
familiar, like the frequently anthologized Tolstoy story “How Much Land Does a
Man Need?” and the heartrendingly simple story of love out of reach in Chekhov “The
Lady with the Toy Dog.”
There are also some surprises. Dostoevsky’s feverish “White Nights” arrives
in the collection like a punch to the jaw.
His stamp is so indelibly printed on this story that it stands nearly
alone in the collection. Perhaps the
other story that comes near to its dark vision is Andreyev’s “Lazarus”
a strange tale of Lazarus’ post-resurrection life that very much resembles
death.
Again, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can have all these
stories . These are the greats
of a previous era in Russian literature at your finger tips.
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