Gogol's Diary of a Madman, Ivan Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Leo Tolstoy's Lucerne are all here. Produced between 1835 and 1864, these four works helped define Russia's Golden Age of Literature and established St. Petersburg as a literary mecca rivaled only by Paris in the 1920s. The stories in this volume all demonstrate, with deft mastery, a range of possibilities available in the first-person narrative form, setting a standard that future writers continue to admire and emulate today. These characters ache with an angst and ennui that was was all too common among the Russian intelligentsia during the rule of Nicholas I-feelings that ring true still today for anybody living under the heels of a repressive social structure. How they deal with those emotions, both as characters and as writers, provide lessons for us all. Complete and unabridged, with updated and revised translations, this is an essential volume for anyone interested in the best literature the world's greatest writers have to offer.

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