Russian Comic Fiction Author:Gogol, Dostoevsky, Krylov, Chekhov, Saltykov, and Tolstoy; Edited and Translated by Guy Daniels Of Nikolai Gogol's achievement in his short comic masterpiece, How the Two Ivans Quarreled, a nineteenth-century critic said, "To make us laugh to the point of tears at the stupidities, worthlessness and imbecility of these living lampoons of mankind is amazing, but then to make us pity those idiots with our hearts-that is the divine art that is... more » called creativity." This exquisite collection of wildly funny tales, including Gogol's, should once and for all dispel the too commonly held view that great Russian literature is relentlessly gloomy. On the contrary, among the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Krylov, and Saltykov may be found examples of comic fiction that rank with the very greatest of that genre: Krylov's hilarious acount, for instance, of an absurdly vulgar landowner who values horses above humans; Dostoyevsky's political satire in which "a gentleman of a certain age and a certain appearance" is swallowed alive by a crocodile; Tolstoy's anarchic voyage into a world of crazy make-believe.
A dozen great pieces of comic fiction are presented here in brilliant, spirited translations by Guy Daniels, who has also provided an illuminating introduction dealing with this fascinating side of Russian Literature.
Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Guy Daniels« less