What a treat this anthology was! It brings together short stories from the 19th and 20th centuries, by writers both familiar and new to me, with fascinating introductions by the editor (who also translated many of the stories), Robert Chandler, that put both authors and stories in context. It includes many well-known short story writers, like Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov, and more, as well as writers who are better known for their longer works like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Platonov. It omits well-known writers, like Grossman, who almost exclusively wrote longer works.

It was a pleasure for me to be introduced to some writers I had long heard of (and some of whom reside on my TBR), but had never read, like Teffi, Leskov, and Shalamov. I also appreciated being able to read some writers who wrote (and who were even born) after Stalin had died. Then again, I had read some of the stories before, but was glad to reread them. And I was surprised to find I enjoyed Dostoyevsky's story, "Bobok," and indeed found it funny, something I have never associated with Dostoyevsky. All in all, I liked most of the stories Chandler picked, something extraordinarily difficult to achieve in any anthology, but I did feel the better known authors are better known for a reason; their stories are better.

The stories cover a wide range of topics, from personal to political, from life in the country to life in the city, from the realistic to the absurd, from tragic to comic, from touching to outraging. For anyone interested in Russian literature, or anyone who likes short stories, this book is a treasure.

I was always going to enjoy this book. I have loved Russian literature from an early age, and this short story collection is a Hall of Fame of Russian literature. With a few exceptions, which the editor Robert Chandler highlights in his introduction, the big names are all here. The main omissions are Gorky, Grossman, Pasternak and Sholokhov, because their best work is in other forms like novels or poetry, and Nabokov, because agreement couldn’t be reached with his publishers. But there’s still Pushkin and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Gogol and Turgenev and Solzhenitsyn and Bulgakov and Chekhov … and also a selection of other writers, some of whom I hadn’t read before, but all of whom I was glad to get to know.

Of course in all collections the quality varies, but I was amazed to find that I liked almost all of these. I also appreciated the editor’s short introduction to each story, giving a quick biography of the writer and some notes on what makes the story worth including, or things you might need to know to understand it. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to get a flavour of Russian literature, or to people like me who could read Dostoevsky etc all day! I've posted full reviews of all the stories on my website, www.andrewblackman.net. ( )