Pushkin's Fictions

Catalog description

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is among the greatest of Russian writers and a central figure in Russian culture. In a short life - he was killed in a duel at 37 - he wrote in a wide variety of forms. He is best known as a poet, but his fiction marks the beginning of the Russian novel; to understand Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, we need to read Pushkin. Among the fictions we will read are stories, including the Tales of Belkin and The Queen of Spades, the short novel The Captain's Daughter, the novel in verse Eugene Onegin, and the historical novel about the author's African ancestor, The Moor of Peter the Great. We will also read selected short poems.