Ivan Bunin was the first Russian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. A realist writer with a baroque style, he was considered to be the modern heir of the literary tradition established by Tolstoy and Chekov. Born in 1870 in Voronezh, Central Russia, he began his career working for various newspapers and literary publications until his collections of poetry and short stories made him famous, which enabled him to make a living as a freelance writer. In the wake of the Bolshevik Revol...

The collection includes the best works of famous Russian writers:Fyodor DostoevskyNOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUNDTHE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MANTHE BEGGAR BOY AT CHRIST'S CHRISTMAS TREELeo TolstoyTHE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICHA LETTER TO A HINDUA CONFESSIONGOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT WAITSA RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS PARTYAnton ChekhovTHE LADY WITH THE DOGA SLANDERTHE HORSE-STEALERSTHE PETCHENYEGA DEAD BO...

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...

Russian short stories are known for being melancholy, often dealing with suffering. However, they can also be funny and absurd. Some common subjects include class distinctions, the plight of the underdog, and a rejection of authoritarianism and bureaucracy.The best collection of Russian short stories includes:Fyodor Dostoevsky:Notes from the UndergroundThe Dream of a Ridiculous ManThe Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas TreeLeo Tolstoy:The Deat...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

The Village (1910) is Bunin's unsparing panorama of provincial Russia, following the peasant brothers Tikhon and Kuzma through labor, drink, violence, and thwarted hope while the 1905 unrest flickers at the margins. In chiselled, economical prose that blends late-Realist precision with Naturalist determinism, Bunin builds an episodic social anatomy; landscapes, luminous yet indifferent, counterpoint the villagers' brutality and endurance. Born in 1870 to an impoverished Oryol gentry family...

"The Gentleman from San Francisco" is easily the best known of Ivan Bunin's stories and has achieved the stature of a masterpiece. But Bunin's other stories and novellas are not to be missed. Over the last several years a great many of them have been freshly and brilliantly translated by Graham Hettlinger. Together, along with four new pieces, they are now published in a one-volume paperback collection of Bunin's greatest writings. In Mr. Hettlinger's renderings readers will see why Bunin ...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these mo

Ivan Bunin's The Village is a bleak, unsparing portrait of rural Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, centered on the Krasov brothers and the moral, economic, and spiritual disintegration of peasant life. Written in a hard, lucid prose that resists sentimental populism, the novel dismantles idealized visions of the countryside then common in Russian literature. Its realism is severe, almost documentary, yet charged with symbolic force, placing it in dialogue with Tolstoyan social c...

Ivan Bunin was a Russian author, poet and diarist, who in 1933 (at the age of 63) won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing." Viewed by many at the time as the heir to his friend and contemporary Chekhov, Bunin wrote his poems and stories with a depth of description that attracted the admiration of his fellow authors. Maxim Gorky described him as "the best Russian writer of the day" and "the fir...

Ivan Bunin received the 1933 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing." Aristocrat to the core, Bunin somehow remained connected to the land and people and keenly felt their pulse of life. His acute observations resulted in the accurate and unforgettable characters who populated his writing.His love for punctuation and punctilious choice of words is legendary.Reading Bunin's stories is on...

The Village (1910) is Bunin's unsparing panorama of provincial Russia, following the peasant brothers Tikhon and Kuzma through labor, drink, violence, and thwarted hope while the 1905 unrest flickers at the margins. In chiselled, economical prose that blends late-Realist precision with Naturalist determinism, Bunin builds an episodic social anatomy; landscapes, luminous yet indifferent, counterpoint the villagers' brutality and endurance. Born in 1870 to an impoverished Oryol gentry family...