Nikolai Semjonowitsch Leskow Books

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.

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.

An uproarious romp of one-upmanship and drunkenness from the nineteenth-century Russian comic genius.

Eine Auswahl aus Leskows Geschichten zur Weihnachts- und Neujahrszeit. Wundersame Ereignisse, Beispiele unerwarteter Selbstbesinnung, die- nicht nur zu Weihnachten- den Leser zum Nachdenken über sich selbst und über Not und Bedrängnis anderer auffordern. »Der Gast beim Bauern« - »Die Tagediebe« - »Das Tier« - »Der Heckrubel« - »Ein kleiner Fehler« - »Das Perlenhalsband« - »Fischsuppe ohne Fisch«