Empfehlungen basierend auf "The Precipice"

No marriage of a major twentieth-century writer is quite as beguiling as that of Vladimir Nabokov’s to Véra Slonim. She shared his delight at the enchantment of life’s trifles and literature’s treasures, and he rated her as having the best and quickest sense of humor of any woman he had met. From their first encounter in 1923, Vladimir’s letters to Véra chronicle a half-century-long love story, one that is playful, romantic, and memorable.At the same time, the letters reveal much about their author. We see the infectious fascination with which Vladimir observed everything—animals, people, speech, landscapes and cityscapes—and glimpse his ceaseless work on his poems, plays, stories, novels, memoirs, screenplays, and translations. This delightful volume is enhanced by twenty-one photographs, as well as facsimiles of the letters and the puzzles and drawings Vladimir often sent to Véra.With 8 pages of photographs and 47 illustrations in text

A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A distinctly worryingly human animal is now on the loose, and the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance. An absurd and superbly comic story, this classic novel can also be read as a fierce parable of the Russian Revolution.

Bringing together six of Turgenev's best known stories in one volume, this collection includes "First Love," "Asya," "Mumu," "The Diary of a Superfluous Man," "Song of Triumphant Love," and "King Lear of the Steppes."

Our life is brief . . .The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Russian novel – a brilliant dark fantasy combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.‘A book that has the potential to become a modern classic.’Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The MagiciansOur life is brief . . .While on holiday at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with a sinister air directs her to perform strange and uncomfortable tasks. He rewards her efforts with a strange golden coin.As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her new domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or university, she also feels that somehow it’s the only place she should be. Against her mother’s wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education.As she quickly discovers, the institute’s ‘special technologies’ are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons maddeningly obscure, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price.Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of… and suddenly all she could ever want.A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work – brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey – is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Max Barry’s Lexicon, and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place fantastical and new.

Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian. After his father, a paperhanger and upholsterer, died of cholera, five-year-old Gorky was taken to live with his grandfather, a polecat-faced tyrant who would regularly beat him unconscious, and with his grandmother, a tender mountain of a woman and a wonderful storyteller, who would kneel beside their bed (with Gorky inside it pretending to be asleep) and give God her views on the day's happenings, down to the last fascinating details. She was, in fact, Gorky's closest friend and the epic heroine of a book swarming with characters and with the sensations of a curious and often frightened little boy.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In a major burst of creativity, Russian poet Alexander Pushkin during just three months in 1830 completed Eugene Onegin, composed more than thirty lyric poems, wrote several short stories and folk tales, and penned the four short dramas in verse that comprise the "little tragedies". The "little tragedies" stand among the great masterpieces of Russian literature, yet they were last translated into English a quarter-century ago, and have in recent years been out of print entirely. In this outstanding new translation, Nancy K. Anderson preserves the cadence and intensity of Pushkin's work while aligning it with today's poetic practices and freer approach to metrics. In addition she provides critical essays examining each play in depth, a discussion of her approach to translating the plays, and a consideration of the genre of these dramatic pieces and their performability.The four "little tragedies" -- Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight, The Stone Guest, and A Feast During the Plague -- are extremely compressed dialogues, each dealing with a dominant protagonist whose central internal conflict determines both the plot and structure of the play. Pushkin focuses on human passions and the interplay between free will and fate: though each protagonist could avoid self-ruin, instead he freely chooses it.

I am a ridiculous man. They call me mad now. That would be a promotion in rank A delusional man whose strange dream changes his life; a self-justifying husband who causes his wife's suicide; a witness to a young girl's ruin; a writer who stretches out on a gravestone and listens to the gossip of the dead ... the narrators of these four confessional tales show how little we understand ourselves.

Anecdotes about Balakirev -- Tales of the ancient Poshekhonians / Vasily Berezaisky -- The merry old fellow / Teller of old Moscow tales -- The ancient and modern divinatory oracle / Martin Zadek -- Guak, or unbounded devotion: a knightly tale -- The tale of Vanka Kain -- The new Sterne / A.A. Shakhovskoi -- Traditional songs (late 18th century) -- Ermak Timofeich / Nikolai Polevoi -- Filatka and Miroshka the rivals / Pavel Grigoriev, Jr. -- Ivan Vyzhigin / Faddei Bulgarin -- The little humpbacked horse / Petr Ershov -- The history of Russia told for children / Aleksandra Ishimova -- The battle of the Russians with the Kabardinians / Nikolai Zriakhov -- Etiquette manuals (1849-1911) --Street types -- God save the Tsar / Aleksei Lvov -- Dark eyes / Evgeny Grebenka -- The great Moscow fire / N. Sokolov -- Elegy (Khas-Bulat) / Aleksandr Ammosov and O. Kh. Agrenova-Slavianskaia -- Balagan advertisements / Malafeev Theater (1883) -- The slums of Petersburg / Vsevolod Krestovsky -- How the Russian gave it hot to a German -- Oh those Yaroslavites, what a fine folk / Fedor Ivanich Kuz'ma -- The slums of the female heart -- Correspondence from the Russo-Turkish War / Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko -- War stories from the present-day war with the Turks / M. Evstigneev -- Where is it better? / L.A. Tikhomirov -- A flask of hooch -- Gypsy romances -- Scenes from a third-class car / B.S. Borisov and V.A. Kriger -- Sarah Bernhardt / M.L. Lentovsky -- The queen of diamonds / V.P. Valentinov -- Anecdotes (1840-1917) -- Moscow court reporting / The Moscow Sheet (Early 1880s) -- The terrible wedding night / Aleksei Pazukhin -- The terrible bandit Churkin -- Where the oranges ripen / N.A. Leikin -- Messrs. Businessmen / I.I. Miasnitsky -- The diary of Maria Bashkirtseva -- Ivanov Pavel / V.M. Doroshevich -- Song of the stormy Petrel / Maxim Gorky -- Light-fingered Sonya / M.D. Klefortov -- Revolutionary songs (late 19th century) -- Vaudeville skits (1905-1910) -- Why was I born into this world / Tobolsk prison song -- The poor fellow died / Konstantin Romanov -- Marusia poisoned herself -- Russian sob sister / Olga Gridina -- How the lasses burned a lad in the stove / Al. Aleksandrovsky -- The wrath of God / V.I. Kryzhandrovskaia -- The little Siberian girl (Sibirochka) / Lidiia Charskaia -- The African princess (Vampuka) / M.N. Volkonsky -- Gladiators of our time / N.N. Breshko-Breshkovsky -- Sanin / Mikhail Artsybashev -- The keys of happiness / Anastasia Verbitskaia -- The vanquished / Count Amori -- Do you remember? / Petr Chardynin -- The wrath of Dionytsus / E.A. Nagrodskaia -- The Countess-actress / Count Amori -- The bloody Talisman / Nat Pinkerton, King of detectives -- The headlands of Manchuria -- The heroic feat of the Don Cossack Kuzma Firsovich Kriuchkov -- Jackals / Sergei Sokolsky -- Rasputin's nighttime orgies / V.V. Ramazanov

The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit. With his disorderly band of accomplices - including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat - he immediately begins to create havoc. Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos. Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try a little black magic of her own to save the man she loves - A masterpiece of magical surrealism, a triumph of the imagination Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Century.

The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I. Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.