A much neglected literary figure, Ivan Bunin is one of Russia's major writers and ranks with Tolstoy and Chekhov at the forefront of the Russian Realists. Drawing artistic inspiration from his personal experience, these powerful, evocative stories are set in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia of his youth, in the countries that he visited and in France, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. In the title story, for example, a family's tour of fashionable Eur...

Maxim Gorky achieved literary acclaim in Russia against all odds. Orphaned at a young age and forced to fend for himself on the streets, Gorky had virtually no schooling, but he managed to capture the imaginations of readers through his intensely realistic descriptions of the hardships faced by the impoverished and marginalized. From the very beginning of his career, Gorky maintained a correspondence with Russian literary luminary Anton Chekhov, which later blossomed into a lasting friends...

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 ...

Life is to be lived. Experiences gained, pleasures sampled. But, troublingly, when you are a classic author your thoughts sometimes lean towards darker thoughts. Within the space of a few paragraphs these literary masters shape a new world; more difficult experiences, darker pleasures. Life becomes uneasy, a queasy feeling, perhaps a repulsion here, a disgust there and very soon what was cosy, warm and comfortable becomes cold, painful, even horrific.The talents of their pens now f...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...

Ivan Bunin was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. For his poetry, he was twice awarded Russia's highest literary honor, the Pushkin Prize. While Bunin's prose writing is well known, his poetry-though highly praised by critics and contemporaries such as Blok, Gorky and Nabokov-has been unjustly ignored.This collection of over 100 verse translations is the first English language book of Bunin's poetry. Spanning a long period of poetic output (1886-1952), this sel...

The work is about the delicate nature of life and how even something as simple as breathing can be filled with beauty and complexity. Bunin writes about the appreciation of life in all its forms and how even the most mundane moments can be filled with wonder. He also reflects on the fragility of life and how it can be so easily taken away.

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 one of the bes...

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born on 22nd October 1870 in Voronezh province, in the South-West of the Russian Empire.His early life was plagued by his Father’s gambling habits which caused his education to be erratic and the family to lose most of their wealth.Bunin published his first poem in 1887 in St Petersburg and later in Oryol he worked for the local paper and became its editor, handily allowing him to publish his own poems and short stories. There he met and married ...

A lush, romantic, and intense tale of first lust, first love, and the difference between the two.

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin was born on 22nd October 1870 in Voronezh province, in the South-West of the Russian Empire.His early life was plagued by his Father’s gambling habits which caused his education to be erratic and the family to lose most of their wealth.Bunin published his first poem in 1887 in St Petersburg and later in Oryol he worked for the local paper and became its editor, handily allowing him to publish his own poems and short stories. There he met and married ...

You trained for years to become a clinician. You learned to diagnose and treat patients, to perform under pressure, and to make decisions when the margin for error was zero. Nobody taught you how to lead people.The assumption - unstated but pervasive - is that physicians already know how to lead. They can hold authority without losing trust, navigate a team fracturing under chronic stress, and stay grounded in their values when it matters most. For most of us, leading did not come ...