"White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov's semi-autobiographical first novel, is the story of the Turbin family in Kiev in 1918. Alexei, Elena, and Nikolka Turbin have just lost their mother - their father had died years before - and find themselves plunged into the chaotic civil war that erupted in the Ukraine in the wake of the Russian Revolution. In the context of this family's personal loss and the social turmoil surrounding them, Bulgakov creates a brilliant...

A comic novel about the theater world in early Soviet Russia and a "biting attack on censorship" (The Guardian, UK). From the author of The Master and Margarita, this semi-autobiographical satirical novel paints a vibrant portrait of life behind the curtains of the Russian literary and theater arenas in the early decades of the twentieth century. Maxudov is a failed novelist who, after contemplating suicide, adapts his novel into a play that-seemingly...

"This collection includes not only well-known classics but also modern masterpieces, many of them previously censored. There are stories by acknowledged giants - Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn - and by equally great writers such as Platonov who have only recently become known to the English-speaking world. Some stories are tragic, but the volume also includes a great deal of comedy - from Pushkin's subtle wit to Kharms's dark absurdism,...

"Featuring the original Russian on the left-hand page and new English translations on the right-hand side, contents include "The Fugitive" by Vladimir A. Gilyarovsky, "The Present" by Leonid Andreev, "Trataton" by Dimitry Mamin-Sibiryak, "Life Granted" by Aleksandr Grin, and "Icarus" by Stepan Skitalets, plus stories by Vasily Grossman, Aleksandr Kuprin, and others. No further apparatus or reference work is necessary for the self-contained text. Appropriate...

"Contemporary artists and illustrators reimagine great works of literature from around the world"--Back cover.