A SkyBlue Life and Selected Stories Author:Maxim Gorky "The world Gorky described in his stories was one of uneasy fermentation, pressing change, and desperate urgency...It was a world of almost American dynamism, but its keynote was rebellion," writes George Reavey, who has both selected and given superb new translations [1964]to this collection of Gorky's finest tales. The heir to the great Russia... more »n literary tradition of the nineteenth century, it was Gorky's genius to strike out on a bold new path of vigorous, often harsh, realism, exploring a vast uncharted area of human experience -- the "lower depths" of Russian society. Against a background of steppe and shore, river and mountain, peasant village and teeming city, Gorky brings to life an unforgettable gallery of characters, portrayed in all their ignorance and wisdon; their brutality; their delicate, almost inarticulate, yearnings. These tales tell of theft and murder, love and birth, tragic pain and fleeting beauty; in them, Gorky reveals both his intimate knowledge of the most sordid aspects of existence and his indomitable faith in the infinite potential of the human spirit. He was, in the words of Stefan Zweig, "a pure true man, a great creative artist."« less