The Captain's Daughter: Essential Stories

By Alexander Pushkin, Alexandre Pouchkine, Aleksandr S. Puixkin

Book Overview

A dazzling new collection of Pushkin's fiction, in definitive translations by the acclaimed Anthony Briggs

As complex as they are gripping, Pushkin's stories are some of the greatest and most influential ever written. Foundational to the development of Russian prose, they retain stunning freshness and clarity, more than ever in Anthony Briggs's finely nuanced translations.

These are stories that upend expectations at every turn: in 'The Captain's Daughter', Pushkin's masterful novella of love and rebellion set during the reign of Catherine the Great, a mysterious encounter proves fatally significant during a brutal uprising, while in 'The Queen of Spades' a man obsessively pursues an elderly woman's secret for success at cards, with bizarre results.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1782276386
• ISBN13: 9781782276388
• Release Date: June 2021
• Publisher: Pushkin Collection
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.6" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A marvelous new translation

For the past five years, Hesperus Press has been doggedly pursuing a mission to "bring near what is far," to publish lost gems of world literature in new and fresh translations. Several Russian stones have been uncovered and repolished, including an acclaimed translation of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, as well as shorter, lesser-known works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Mayakovsky and Leskov. This marvelous new translation of Pushkin's near-to-last literary work before his death in 1837 is a historical novel of Pugachyov's rebellion, thickly laced with themes of loyalty, premonition, love and betrayal. Translator Robert Chandler's rendering has just enough lilt in the diction to remind us that this is 19th century literature, and, for the American reader, sufficient Britishisms (e.g. "going out on the razzle" or "kick over the traces") to remind that this was originally written in another language entirely. (Reviewed in Russian Life)

'When I hang a man I hang him....

.... when I pardon, I pardon. That's the way I am.' This love story with its fairy tale ending was charming to me despite the horrors of the historical rise of a usurper to the rightful throne in Russia. It's hero survives on the basis of a chance encounter and generosity. But there is a greater 'luck' to come at the end of the story.