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.Bot...

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 i...

From the author of The Master and Margarita comes this short and tragic masterpiece about drug addictionYoung Dr. Bromgard has come to a small country town to assume a new practice. No sooner has he arrived than he receives word that a colleague, Dr. Polyakov, has fallen gravely ill. Before Bromgard can go to his friend’s aid, Polyakov is brought to his practice in the middle of the night with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and, barely conscious, gives Bromgard his journa...

Considered one of the most influential authors of twentieth century Russian Literature, Ivan Bunin's "Dark Avenues" is the culmination of a life's work which unrelentingly questioned of the political doxa whilst taking his poetic mastery of language to dark new heights. Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of a disintegrating Russian culture, this collection of short fiction centres around dark, erotic liaisons told with a rich, elegaic poetics which probes the artistic lim...

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. 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 o...

From the stark depictions of rural Russia in ‘Provincial Life’ to the vivid portrayal of an artillery unit in ‘At the End of the Earth’, from stories such as ‘The Cave’ and ‘Mamai’, describing the terrible conditions endured by the citizens of Petrograd in the years of the civil war, to ‘X’, a light-hearted, slightly absurdist example of metafiction, through to the sombre tones of the final story in this volume, ‘Flood’, this volume collects some of the best fiction by the celebrated autho...

We takes place in a distant future, where humans are forced to submit their wills to the requirements of the state, under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor, and dreams are regarded as a sign of mental illness. In a city of straight lines, protected by green walls and a glass dome, a spaceship is being built in order to spearhead the conquest of new planets. Its chief engineer, a man called D-503, keeps a journal of his life and activities: to his mathematical mind everything seems to...

In a series of nine letters, the narrator tells his friend how he introduced Vera Nikolayevna, a married woman who had been forbidden as a child to read fiction and poetry, to the intellectual pleasures of Goethe’s masterpiece. Opening up in front of Vera’s eyes is not only the realm of imagination, but also a world of unbridled feelings and tempestuous passions, which can only shatter the comfort and safety of her existence and force her to set off on a journey of spiritual awakening.This...

In Bulgakov’s ‘Diaboliad’, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the Main Central Depot of Match Materials and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior, responsible for his dismissal. His quest through the labyrinth of Soviet bureaucracy takes on the increasingly surreal dimensions of a nightmare.This early satirical story, reminiscent of Gogol and Dostoevsky, was first published in 1924 and incurred the wrath of pro-S...

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 most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for their dialogue but their atmosphere and the tensions expressed between the lines.Collected in this volume are Chekhov’s four most celebrated plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin. In these personal stories of unfulfilled love, failed a...

Ivan Bunin’s first published work, The Village is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centering on episodes in the lives of two peasant brothers “characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human” it reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land.At once nostalgic for a bygone more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the twentieth century, Bunin’s ...