An indispensable edition ... Pushkin the storyteller is witty and compassionate, panoramic and precise - Publishers Weekly

Brilliant ...[Pushkin] took up narrative prose on a whim, but, as this collection makes clear, he mastered it gloriously. - Los Angeles Review of Books

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 into a noble family, and educated in St Petersburg, where he showed precocious promise as a poet. He entered government service, but mixed with radical circles, and in 1820 was exiled to southern Russia by Tsar Alexander I. Here he wrote his famous lyrical poems Ruslan and Lyudmila and Eugene Onegin and became known for wild behaviour and frequent duels. His absence from St Petersburg during the Decembrist revolt of 1825 may well have saved his life - a number of his friends were executed or sent to Siberia. Recalled from exile by Nicholas I he was allowed to continue writing but subjected to strict censorship. In 1831 he married eighteen-year-old society beauty Natalia Goncharov. His wife was a great success at court and became a favourite of the Tsar - which eventually became a source of irritation, jealousy as well as expense for Pushkin. When Natalia was courted by a young French officer, Baron Georges-Charles d'Anthès (her sister's husband), Pushkin deliberately provoked