The Russian Short Story - Volume 2: Nikolai Gogol to Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Written by Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky

Narrated by Richard Mitchley, David Shaw-Parker and Elliot Fitzpatrick

The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length. Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature.

Perhaps an easier way to enjoy a wider selection of the Russian heritage, with its varied and glorious literary talents, is with the short story. These gems sparkle and beguile the mind with their characters and narrative, exploring facets of society and the human condition that more Western authors somehow find more difficult to navigate, or to explore, explain and relate to.

The Russian short story is, in many respects, in a genre of its own. It is at its captivating best whether it’s an exploration of real-life experiences, through fantasy and fables and on to total absurdity.

In a land so vast it is unsurprising that it is a world almost unto itself. Cultures and landscapes of differing hues are packed together bound only by the wilful bonds and force of Empire.

The stories in this collection traverse the decades where one might be a serf under an absolute monarch, and the reality of that was pretty near to slavery, into an emancipation of sorts in the fields, or towns under the despotic will of landowners and the rich into the upheavals of Empire and then the overthrow of the ruling class and its replacement by the communists, who promised equality for all and delivered a society where the down-trodden remained the lowest yet vital cog of the state machine and its will.

Whilst Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov are a given in any Russian collection we also explore and include Andreyev, Korolenko, Turgenev, Blavatsky and many others to create a world rich and dense across a sprawling landscape of diverse people, riddled with the class and unfairness in perhaps some of the most turbulent times that Russia has ever experienced.

01 - The Russian Short Story - Volume 2 - An Introduction

02 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

03 - Taman by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov

04 - The Jew by Ivan Turgenev

05 - The Rendezvous by Ivan Turgenev

06 - A Strange Story by Ivan Turgenev

07 - Mumu by Ivan Turgenev

08 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev

09 - The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

10 - The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803543888

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol was a Russian novelist and playwright born in what is now considered part of the modern Ukraine. By the time he was 15, Gogol worked as an amateur writer for both Russian and Ukrainian scripts, and then turned his attention and talent to prose. His short-story collections were immediately successful and his first novel, The Government Inspector, was well-received. Gogol went on to publish numerous acclaimed works, including Dead Souls, The Portrait, Marriage, and a revision of Taras Bulba. He died in 1852 while working on the second part of Dead Souls.