Constance Garnett
A desperate young man plans the perfect crime—the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law—if...
Loosely based on sensational press reports of a Moscow student's murder by fellow revolutionists, The Possessed depicts the destructive chaos caused by outside agitators who move into a provincial town. The enigmatic and ideological Stavrogin dominates the novel, his magnetic personality influencing his tutor, the liberal intellectual poseur Stepan Verhovensky, and the teacher's revolutionary son Pyotr, as well as other radicals. Stavrogin is portrayed
...Here are the most unforgettable stories of a master writer who saw all of life and rejected none of it.
In The Kiss, a lonely, love-starved soldier keeps a secret rendezvous for another man and becomes enamored with a woman he is never to see again. The Duel describes the collisions between men and women in hopeless relationships, and how two men are driven to settle the score in a clandestine meeting on a bridge, pistols in hand. In all
...A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov's stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, "It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it
...A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov's stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, "It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it
...Considered one of the first existentialist novels, Notes from Underground contains one of the most unsettling characters in 19th-century fiction. Resentful, cruel, entitled and pitiful, Dostoyevsky's Underground Man is a disturbing human being bent on humiliating others for his own amusement. He despises modern society and stews in a self-imposed misery, articulated through his bitter, contradictory monologues about torment and alienation.
The
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