The archetypal Romantic, killed in a duel in 1837 at the age of 37, Alexander Pushkin was effectively the founder of modern Russian literature. Though famous as a poet, he was equally at home in prose, and this volume includes all his short fiction, as well as unfinished sketches and fragments. Here of course are his masterpieces, 'The Queen of Spades', Pushkin's ironic take on both the supernatural and the society tale, the terse, deadpan Tales of Belkin, often humorous yet imbued with deep understanding of human nature, and his unsurpassable novella, The Captain's Daughter, which, informed by his meticulous research into the Pugachev Rebellion against Catherine the Great, is a perfect combination of folk epic, historical narrative and romance. Other works include the richly comic 'A History of the Village of Goriukhino', the imaginative historical fiction 'The Moor of Peter the Great' (based on the life of the author's own great-grandfather. Pushkin was particularly proud of his African ancestry), and 'Journey to Arzrum', the fascinating autobiographical account of his (unauthorized, and greatly displeasing to the Tsar) travels in the Caucasus at the time of the 1828-9 Russo-Turkish war.

About the Author
Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 into a noble family, and educated in St Petersburg, where he showed precocious promise as a poet. He entered government service, but mixed with radical circles, and in 1820 was exiled to southern Russia by Tsar Alexander I. Here he wrote his famous lyrical poems Ruslan and Lyudmila and Eugene Onegin and became known for wild behaviour and frequent duels. His absence from St Petersburg during the Decembrist revolt of 1825 may well have saved his life - a number of his friends were executed or sent to Siberia. Recalled from exile by Nicholas I he was allowed to continue writing but subjected to strict censorship. In 1831 he married eighteen-year-old society beauty Natalia Goncharov. His wife was a great success at court and became a favourite of the Tsar - which eventually became a source of irritation, jealousy as well as expense for Pushkin. When Natalia was courted by a young French officer, Baron Georges-Charles d'Anthes (her sister's husband), Pushkin deliberately provoked

Reviews
An indispensable edition ... Pushkin the storyteller is witty and compassionate, panoramic and precise * Publishers Weekly *
Brilliant ...[Pushkin] took up narrative prose on a whim, but, as this collection makes clear, he mastered it gloriously. * Los Angeles Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9781841594187
Author Alexander Pushkin
Format Hardback
Page Count 616
Imprint Everyman's Library
Publisher Everyman
Weight(grams) 640g
Dimensions(mm) 208mm * 138mm * 36mm