Penguin The Gambler and Other Stories Достоевский Федор Михайлович

With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky's early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. Poor Folk, the author's first great literary triumph, is the story of a tragic relationship between an impoverished copy clerk and a young seamstress, told through their passionate letters to each other. In The Landlady Dostoyevsky portrays a dreamer hero who is captivated by a curious couple and becomes their lodger. Mr Prokharchin, inspired by a true story, is a sly comedy centring on an eccentric miser, and Polzunkov is a powerful character sketch which, in common with the other tales in this volume, questions the very nature of existence

A man goes mad because he is happy • A civil servant behaves like a monster at a wedding-party • A man is swallowed by a crocodile, but not eaten nor seriously damaged • Dostoevsky's stories inhabit similarly volcanic atmospheres as his novels, places of curiosity and exception. They resemble jokes and anecdotes, told by volatile, voluble, morbidly sensitive and frustrated characters. These narrators all have a tendency to express themselves in crescendos of conflicting emotions, while the stories themselves steer clear of grand conclusions • Michael Wood's selection of Dostoevsky's shorter works is drawn from the timeless translations of Constance Garnett whose work, he says in his preface, gives readers the best of several worlds

The Steppe and Other Stories 1887-91 is a collection that reveals Anton Chekhov's evolution from a novice writer to a master of short narrative form. This Penguin Classics edition is translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Donald Rayfield • This collection of Chekhov's finest early writing is headlined by 'The Steppe', which established his reputation, telling the unforgettable tale of a boy's journey to a new school in Kiev, travelling through majestic landscapes towards an unknown destiny. 'Gusev' depicts an ocean voyage, where the sea takes on a terrifying, primeval power; 'The Kiss' portrays a shy soldier's failed romantic encounter; and in 'The Duel' two men's enmity ends in farce. Haunting and highly atmospheric, all the stories in this volume show a writer emerging from the shadow of his masters - great Russian writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Gogol - and discovering his own voice

A superb new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most frightening and visionary short fiction • Strange beasts, night terrors, absurd bureaucrats and sinister places abound in this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. Some are less than a page long, others more substantial; all were unpublished in his lifetime. These matchless short works range from the gleeful miniature horror 'Little Fable' to the off-kilter humour of 'Investigations of a Dog', and from the elaborate waking nightmare of 'Building the Great Wall of China' to the creeping unease of 'The Burrow', where a nameless creature's labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear and paranoia

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties

Ширли Джексон: Лотерея и другие истории • Это окончательный сборник рассказов Ширли Джексон, включая "Лотерею" - одну из самых страшных и культовых историй двадцатого века, оказавшую влияние на таких писателей, как Нил Гейман и Стивен Кинг • В этих историях превосходный хозяин оказывается выгнанным из дома собственными гостями; женщина проводит день своей свадьбы в лихорадочных поисках своего будущего мужа; а в самой известной истории Ширли Джексон маленькая фермерская деревня собирается вместе для ужасного ежегодного ритуала. Подкрадывающееся беспокойство из-за растраченных жизней и кровавое ликование из-за потерянных жизней захватывающе передано в этих рассказах о растраченном потенциале и случайной жестокости мастером короткого рассказа • Книга на английском языке

The anonymous narrator of Notes from Underground is a bitter, misanthropic man living alone in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1860s. The novel consists of the notes that the man writes, a confused and often contradictory set of memoirs or confessions describing and explaining his alienation from modern society

"Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn." - Friedrich Nietzsche • Dostoevsky's exploration of human psychology through fiction has captivated readers for over a century. This handsome hardback collection brings together three of his most notable works: Crime and Punishment, The Gambler and Notes from Underground. Writing from the fraught political landscape of 19th-century Russia, Dostoevsky explores corruption, morality and visions of a utopian society. These novels are at once gripping and profound

The new Penguin Freud, under Adam Phillips' general editorship, offers a fantastic opportunity to see Freud in a fresh light • This endlessly beguiling, suggestive, thought-provoking writer can be appreciated nowhere more vividly than in The Case Histories: 'Little Hans', 'The Rat Man', 'The Wolf Man' and 'Some Character Types Met within Psychoanalytic Work.'

O. Henry was a master of the short story and one of the most popular American writers of the twentieth century. This selection of tales from across his writing career ranges from New York apartments to the cattle-lands of Texas, taking in con men, clerks, hustlers, shop assistants, tramps and tricksters. They all highlight his ironic, comic eye, his gift for evoking speech and setting, and his unique approach to life's quirks of fate • The Penguin English Library - collectable general readers' editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War

Throughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy from the earliest tales including 'Old Shloyme' and 'Childhood', which affirm his Russian-Jewish childhood, to the relatively non-Jewish world of his collection of stories entitled 'Red Cavalry'. Babel's masterpiece, 'Red Cavalry' is the most dramatic expression of his dualism and in his simultaneous acceptance and rejection of his heritage heralds the great American-Jewish writers from Henry Roth to Saul Bellow and Philip Roth

This new selection of stories featuring Inspector Maigret - three of which are published in English for the first time - takes the detective from a mysterious death in a Cannes hotel to a love triangle in the Loire countryside and a bitter rivalry within a Parisian family • Written during the Second World War, just a few years after Simenon had published what was intended to be his last novel featuring Inspector Maigret, these tales of human frailty and deceit distil the atmosphere, themes and psychological intensity that make Simenon's famous detective series so compelling