Download or read book Petersburg Tales New Translation written by Nikolai Gogol and published by Alma Classics. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the 1830s and early 1840s, these comic stories tackle life behind the cold and elegant façade of the Imperial capital from the viewpoints of various characters, such as a collegiate assessor who one day finds that his nose has detached itself from his face and risen the ranks to become a state councillor (‘The Nose’), a painter and a lieutenant whose romantic pursuits meet with contrasting degrees of success (‘Nevsky Prospect’) and a lowly civil servant whose existence desperately unravels when he loses his prized new coat (‘The Overcoat’). Also including the ‘Diary of Madman’, these Petersburg Tales paint a critical yet hilarious portrait of a city riddled with pomposity and self-importance, masterfully juxtaposing nineteenth-century realism with madcap surrealism, and combining absurdist farce with biting satire.
Download or read book God Lives in St Petersburg written by Tom Bissell and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Americans abroad in Central Asia find themselves pushed to their limits in these acclaimed, prize-winning stories by one of our most exciting and talented new authors. Combining bleak humor, ironic insight, deep compassion, and unflinching moral and ethical inquiry, Tom Bissell gives us a gripping collection that is both timeless and profoundly relevant to today’s complex world.
Download or read book St Petersburg written by Jonathan Miles and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter the Great, St. Petersburg's dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly cemented by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations—St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad and, once again, St. Petersburg—has always been a place of perpetual contradiction.It was a window to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of Russia’s unique glory was also created here: its literature, music, dance, and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets.It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. In St. Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this paradoxical and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when its fate hangs in the balance once more.
Download or read book Petersburg Tales written by Николай Васильевич Гоголь and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together Gogol's Petersburg Tales with his two most famous plays, all of which guide us through the streets of St. Petersburg, the city erected by force and ingenuity on the marshes of the Neva estuary. Something of the deception and violence of the city's creation seems to lurk beneath its harmonious facade, however, and it confounds its inhabitants with false dreams and absurd visions. This new translation by Christopher English brings out the unique vitality and humor of Russia's finest comic writer. --Publisher.
Download or read book Midnight in St Petersburg written by Vanora Bennett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faberge jewels, the mysterious Rasputin, and a priceless violin: each plays a part in one young woman's fight for survival, and for love, in revolutionary Russia. St. Petersburg, 1911. Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms of the south to take refuge with distant relatives in Russia's capital. Welcomed by the flamboyant Leman family, she is apprenticed into their violin-making workshop. She feels instantly at home in their bohemian circle, but revolution is in the air, and as society begins to fracture, she is forced to choose between her heart and her head. She loves her brooding cousin, Yasha, but he is wild, destructive, and devoted to revolution. Horace Wallick, an Englishman who makes precious Faberge creations, is older and promises security and respectability. And, like many others, she is drawn to the mysterious, charismatic figure beginning to make a name for himself in the city: Rasputin. As the rebellion descends into anarchy and bloodshed, a commission to repair a priceless Stadivarius violin offers Inna a means of escape. But what man will she choose to take with her? And is it already too late? A magical and passionate story steeped in history and intrigue, Vanora Bennett's Midnight in St. Petersburg is an extraordinary novel of music, politics, and the toll that revolution exacts on the human heart.
Download or read book Winter Garden written by Kristin Hannah and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn't know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes Kristin Hannah's powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.
Download or read book The Witches of St Petersburg written by Imogen Edwards-Jones and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Readers fascinated with the Romanovs and this tumultuous period in Russian history will be enthralled by this deliciously dark and memorable novel.” —Publishers Weekly Inspired by real characters, this transporting historical fiction debut spins the fascinating story of two princesses in the Romanov court who practiced black magic, befriended the Tsarina, and invited Rasputin into their lives—forever changing the course of Russian history. As daughters of the impoverished King of Montenegro, Militza and Stana must fulfill their duty to their father and leave their beloved home for St. Petersburg to be married into senior positions in the Romanov court. For their new alliances to the Russian nobility will help secure the future of the sisters’ native country. Immediately, Militza and Stana feel like outcasts as the aristocracy shuns them for their provincial ways and for dabbling in the occult. Undeterred, the sisters become resolved to make their mark by falling in with the lonely, depressed Tsarina Alexandra, who—as an Anglo-German—is also an outsider and is not fully accepted by members of the court. After numerous failed attempts to precipitate the birth of a son and heir, the Tsarina is desperate and decides to place her faith in the sisters’ expertise with black magic. Promising the Tsarina that they will be able to secure an heir for the Russian dynasty, Militza and Stana hold séances and experiment with rituals and spells. Gurus, clairvoyants, holy fools, and charlatans all try their luck. The closer they become to the Tsarina and the royal family, the more their status—and power—is elevated. But when the sisters invoke a spiritual shaman, who goes by the name of Rasputin, the die is cast. For they have not only irrevocably sealed their own fates—but also that of Russia itself.
Download or read book St Petersburg written by Andrey Biely and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark in Russian literature hailed as “one of the four great masterpieces of twentieth-century prose” by Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita. In this incomparable novel of the seething revolutionary Russia of 1905, Andrey Biely plays ingeniously on the great themes of Russian history and literature as he tells the mesmerizing tale of Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a high-ranking Tsarist official, and his dilettante son, Nikolai, an aspiring terrorist, whose first assignment is to assassinate his father. “There is nothing like a ticking time bomb to supply fictional suspense, and perhaps no other writer has ever used the device more successfully than Andrey Biely in St. Petersburg . . . Biely is a crafty storyteller who can keep a reader flipping the pages while whipping up an intellectual storm.” —Time
Download or read book St Petersburg stories written by SugarNadya and published by Aegitas. This book was released on 2022-01-17 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many legends about the city of St. Petersburg, where the master and owner of the depilation salon Sugar Nadya lives. Some, of course, were specially invented by their residents to make it more interesting for tourists, but there are also real ones, sometimes shocking and disturbing even to local residents. Nadezhda told one of these stories to her friend Svetlana, who came to St. Petersburg from the capital of Russia. The girl did not suspect that the city, to which she came to improve the qualifications of her sphere of work, is fraught with so many myths. Or maybe not myths at all? This time Nadezhda decided to share a story about a professor who wore women's clothes and then walked along Nevsky Prospekt. No, he was not a transvestite. It turned out that the professor is not an ordinary person, he has his own incredible story. Once he even managed to act in porn, but this profession did not lead him to anything good. Has his experience in the adult film industry influenced him that much?
Download or read book Two Tales of One City written by Zenovia Jeanette Kotsonis and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical novel with revolving stories both set in Saint Petersburg Russia.
Download or read book The Moor of St Petersburg written by Frances Somers Cocks and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the character of a man who rose from slavery to become a general, a wealthy landowner, a distinguished military engineer, an intellectual and bibliophile, and who triumphed over his wife's unfaithfulness. It explains the mythical status within Russia of his Great Grandson Alexander Pushkin, and how his life was destroyed by jealousy.
Download or read book St Petersburg written by Catriona Kelly and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVFragile, gritty, and vital to an extraordinary degree, St. Petersburg is one of the world’s most alluring cities—a place in which the past is at once ubiquitous and inescapably controversial. Yet outsiders are far more familiar with the city’s pre-1917 and Second World War history than with its recent past./divDIV /divDIVIn this beautifully illustrated and highly original book, Catriona Kelly shows how creative engagement with the past has always been fundamental to St. Petersburg’s residents. Weaving together oral history, personal observation, literary and artistic texts, journalism, and archival materials, she traces the at times paradoxical feelings of anxiety and pride that were inspired by living in the city, both when it was socialist Leningrad, and now. Ranging from rubbish dumps to promenades, from the city’s glamorous center to its grimy outskirts, this ambitious book offers a compelling and always unexpected panorama of an extraordinary and elusive place./div
Download or read book The Gentle Axe written by R. N. Morris and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-03-25 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh off the case of a deranged student who murdered his landlady, noted police investigator Porfiry Petrovich barely takes a breath before a bizarre and very grisly double murder lands him back on the streets of the tsarist St. Petersburg he knows all too well. The sardonic sleuth follows a trail from the drinking dens of the Haymarket district to an altogether more genteel stratum of society-a hunt that leads him to a conclusion even he will find shocking. In the tradition of such first-rate historical novels such as The Alienist and The Dante Club, The Gentle Axe is atmospheric and tense storytelling from its dramatic opening to its stunning climax.
Download or read book The Nose and Other Stories written by Nikolai Gogol and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.
Download or read book The Man from St Petersburg written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-06-03 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ken Follett has done it once more . . . goes down with the ease and impact of a well-prepared martini." —New York Times Book Review His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him were ranged the whole of the English police, a brilliant and powerful lord, and the young Winston Churchill himself. These odds would have stopped any man in the world—except the man from St. Petersburg.
Download or read book Forbidden Love in St Petersburg written by Mishka Ben-David and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Convincing tradecraft, coupled with a plausible look at the inner life of a spy with a license to kill, will remind readers of the best of John le Carré.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Yogev Ben-Ari has been sent to St. Petersburg by the Mossad, ostensibly to network and set up business connections. His life is solitary, ordered, and lonely—until he meets Anna. Neither is quite what they seem to be, but while her identity may be mysterious, there is no doubt about the love they feel for each other. But the impassioned affair is not part of the Mossad plan. The agency must hatch a dark scheme to drive the lovers apart. Soon what began as a quiet, solitary mission becomes a perilous exercise in survival, and Ben-Ari has no time to discover the truth about Anna’s identity before his employers act . . . “The novel has a solid sense of intrigue and suspense, and its depiction of the world of international espionage feels accurate (as it should, since the author is a former Mossad agent). The characterizations are precise, too: these aren’t stick figures in a spy story but real people in a real environment. A nice blend of classic spy-novel conventions with a thoroughly contemporary setting.” —Booklist (starred review)
Download or read book The Russian Concubine written by Kate Furnivall and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-06-27 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping novel set in war-torn 1928 China, with a star-crossed love story at its center. In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land. Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.
