Paralleling the covers of Great Jewish Short Stories, and, Famous Chinese Short Stories, John Alcorn’s cover illustration of Norris Houghton’s anthology Great Russian Short Stories displays the dual-headed eagle of the Russian coat-of-arms, a symbol having antecedents actually dating back to the Bronze Age.
More importantly, the simplicity of Alcorn’s composition gives one no inkling as to the superb quality of the tales in this collection, the most striking aspect of the anthology being how despite the natural differences in plot, theme, and style among the thirteen tales therein, the literary quality of the tales is uniformly excellent. (Well, as for my own taste, I’ve always been very partial to the stories of Anton Chechkov.)
Contents
The Queen of Spades, by Alexander Pushkin
… at GoodReads
… Full movie available … at ok.ru
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Taman’, by Mikhail Lermontov
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Bezhin Meadow, by Ivan Turgenev
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How a Muzhik Fed Two Officials, by Mikhail Saltykov
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A Gentle Spirit, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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The Crocodile, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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What Men Live By, by Leo Tolstoy
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Kholstomer, by Leo Tolstoy
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The Lady With The Dog, by Anton Chekhov
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Anna on the Neck, by Anton Chekhov
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The Outrage, by Alexander Kuprin
… at GoodReads
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In The Steppes, by Maxim Gorky
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The Seven Who Were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev
… at GoodReads
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As for the Authors?
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов)
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (Иван Сергеевич Тургенев)
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (Михаил Евграфович Салтыков-Щедрин)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский)
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Антон Павлович Чехов)
Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (Александр Иванович Куприн)
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Алексей Максимович Пешков)
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev (Леонид Николаевич Андреев)
For Further Thought…
“The Prophetic Character of Russian Literature”, by Gary Saul Morson, at The New York Review of Books