A macabre evocation of obsessive love beyond the grave; a nobleman possessed by the soul of a servant girl; a man’s mysterious phobia of the letter U; and the unexpected gift of everlasting life becoming...

The career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of Master and Margarita – now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature – was characterized by a constant and largely...

Finding himself locked in his room for six weeks, a young officer journeys around his room in his imagination, using the various objects it contains as inspiration for a delightful parody of...

When the young Ishmael gets on board Captain Ahab’s whaling ship, little does he suspect that the mission on which he is about to embark is the fulfilment of his master’s obsessive desire for revenge on Moby...

An exponent of the theory that William Shakespeare, the modestly educated provincial man from Stratford-upon-Avon, could not have written the works – full of erudition and accurate professional jargon...

One of the many aspects of Alexander Pushkin’s immense contribution to Russian language and literature, and perhaps the one he is most popular for, is his mastery of the love poem, a genre which...

While Charles Dickens is best known and celebrated for his prolific journalistic output and novelistic creations, he also devoted some of his creative energies to verse. At turns sentimental, melancholy...

Published posthumously in 1830, Stendhal’s travel notes on his 1838 journey to southern France contain descriptions of cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseilles, peppered with numerous personal...

Published a year after The Great Gatsby, this short-story collection showcases many of the celebrated novel’s themes, as well as its unique writing style. Two of the most famous tales, the beautifully elegiac...

Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the seemingly...

Ivan Bunin’s first published work, The Village is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centering on episodes in the lives of two...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden appearance of his double, a more brazen, confident and socially succesful version...