The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories - Softcover

Leskov, Nikolai

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099577364 ISBN 13: 9780099577362

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2014

Synopsis

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. For the first time, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation brings Leskov’s original storytelling and irresistible voice to life.

About this title

Review:

"I don’t know why Nikolai Leskov is not better known: he’s one of the best... You don’t just feel the falling snowflakes and smell the hay – you glimpse where God might be" (Sara Wheeler Observer)

"Nikolai Leskov is one of the greatest and most popular of the wonderful group of Russian storytellers who flourished in the nineteenth century" (New York Times Book Review)

"Serious criticism ignored him but his tales succeeded instantly with the public... No-one catches so truthfully the diversity of national character of his time. His variety is astonishing... Leskov has both feet in life" (V.S. Pritchett)

"On Lady Macbbeth of Mtensk: 'Short, sharp and shocking novel...It is a strikingly modern work, a sort of souped-up Madame Bovary in which the anti-heroine, the bored provincial housewife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, is gripped by an excessive passion for a seductive farmhand. She's hardboiled as any Chandler dame as her ardour for her low-born lover takes her down a jet-black road of cruelty and murder'" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Nikolai Leskov fully deserves the privilege of standing in line with such makers of Russian literature as Tolstoi, Gogol, Turgenev and Goncharov. In power and beauty, Leskov's talent cedes only a little to the talent of any one of these men I have named - the creators of the Holy Bible of the Russian land - but in breadth of exposition, in depth of understanding of life's riddles, and in knowledge of the Russian language, he very often surpasses his predecessors and fellow writers" (Maxim Gorky)

Book Description:

The award-winning translators of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky now bring us a Russian writer ripe for rediscovery whose earthy and singular stories, have never before been properly translated into English

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0099577364
• ISBN 13: 9780099577362
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608