Books by Nikolai Leskov

A new collection of the renowned Russian writer's best short work, including a masterful translation of the famous title story.Nikolai Leskov is the strangest of the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century. His work is closer to the oral traditions of narrative than that of his contemporaries, and served as the inspiration for Walter Benjamin's great essay "The Storyteller," in which Benjamin contrasts the plotty machinations of the modern novel with the strange, melancholy, but also worldly-wise yarns of an older, slower era that Leskov remained in touch with. The title story is a tale of illicit love and multiple murder that could easily find its way into a Scottish ballad and did go on to become the most popular of Dmitri Shostakovich's operas. The other stories, all but one newly translated, present the most focused and finely rendered collection of this indispensable writer currently available in English.

Un bateau fend les vagues sur le lac Lagoda. A bord, les voyageurs ont le regard tourne vers un mysterieux colosse en habit de moine qui fait route avec eux. Pour repondre a leur curiosite, ce dernier raconte aux voyageurs les aventures qui l'ont amene a s'engager dans les ordres et a devenir religieux.Ne serf, tour a tour dresseur de chevaux, vagabond, soldat et moine, ses histoires seront aussi improbables qu'extraordinaires... Le Voyageur Enchante dresse le portrait d'une Russie profonde, celle de la Siberie et des steppes. Mais c'est aussi la une exploration sur l'art et le recit, et la meilleure A uvre pour comprendre la pensee de Nikolai Leskov.-

The Lady Macbeth of the Mzinsk District deals with the theme of the subordinate role expected from women in 19th-century European society. Also it revolves around adultery, provincial life and the planning of murder by a woman, hence the title inspired by the Shakespearean character Lady Macbeth from his play Macbeth.

Five great stories from one of the most quintessentially Russian of writers, Nikolai Leskov.In the best of Leskov's stories, as in almost no others apart from those of Gogol, we can hear the voice of nineteenth-century Russia. An outsider by birth and instinct, Leskov is one of the most undeservedly neglected figures in Russian literature. He combined a profoundly religious spirit with a fascination for crime, an occasionally lurid imagination and a great love for the Russian vernacular. This volume includes five of his greatest stories, including the masterful Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was born in 1831 in Gorokhovo, Oryol Province and was orphaned early. In 1860 he became a journalist and moved to Petersburg where he published his first story. He subsequently wrote a number of folk legends and Christmas tales, along with a few anti-nihilistic novels which resulted in isolation from the literary circles of his day. He died in 1895.David McDuff is a translator of Russian and Nordic literature. His translations of nineteenth and twentieth century Russian prose classics (including works by Dostoyevsky,Tolstoy, Bely and Babel) are published by Penguin.

Leskov's stories of Russian life are explosions of imagination. Peopled by outsized characters including serfs, princes, Gypsy girls, horse dealers, nomadic Tartars and garrulous storytellers, Leskov's writing exuberantly fables the national character of his age.