Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk And Other Stories

Description

A Russian heir to Charles Dickens, Leskov is one of the great, underrated voices of nineteenth-century Russia An outsider from the literary establishment of his day, Nikolai Leskov is one of the most unique voices of nineteenth-century Russia, combining a profound religious spirit with a fascination for idiosyncratic characters, lurid crimes, comic absurdity and the joy of pure story. This volume contains five of his greatest short stories, including the matchless masterpiece Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the tale of a passionate young woman who finds liberation from her stifling marriage in adultery, casual violence and cold-blooded murder.

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 Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bely and Babel) are published by Penguin.