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(0)Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"A Nasty Story," also translated as "An Unpleasant Predicament", is a satirical short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky concerning the escapades of a Russian civil servant. One of Dostoevsky's more obscure works, it was written and published in 1862 following his brief tour of Spain. (from Wikipedia)
This short story is about two apparent friends, one of whom borrowed money from the other, and their attempts to meet up and square the debt. Their relationship grows increasingly strained as their correspondence continues, as it becomes clear that one of them is lying to avoid the other.
4) Bobok
The story is framed as an excerpt from the diary of a frustrated writer named Ivan Ivanovitch. One day he attends the funeral of a casual acquaintance and falls to contemplation in the graveyard. (from Wikipedia)
The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical novel which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. The book is, essentially, a disguised memoir; a loosely-knit collection of facts, events and philosophical discussion organised by "theme" rather than as a continuous story. Dostoevsky himself spent four years in exile in such a prison following his conviction for involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle. This experience
...The story opens around the holiday season of Easter, with the narrator wandering the prison camp. After a Polish political prisoner utters his hatred for the low bred convicts (both the Pole and the narrator are nobles), the narrator heads back to the bunks to rest. As he lies in his bed, he vividly recalls a memory from his early childhood. While playing near a birch wood, he had heard the shout "Wolf! Wolf!" Panicked, the boy runs away
...The story relates the events that befall one Ivan Matveich when he, his wife Elena Ivanovna, and the narrator visit the Passage on Nevsky Avenue to see a crocodile that has been put on display by a German entrepreneur. After teasing the crocodile, Ivan Matveich is swallowed alive. He finds the inside of the crocodile to be quite comfortable, and the animal's owner refuses to allow it to be cut open, in spite of the pleas from Elena Ivanovna.
...9) Polzunkov
Excerpt:
"I began to scrutinize the man closely. Even in his exterior there was something so peculiar that it compelled one, however far away one's thoughts might be, to fix one's eyes upon him and go off into the most irrepressible roar of laughter. That is what happened to me."
10) A Faint Heart
A Faint Heart tells the story of a young man who can’t deal with the overwhelming happiness that suddenly came into his life and the pressure of fulfilling his duties as a worker for a man that has been a good chief to him. (from Amazon)
11) A Little Hero
Excerpt:
"At that time I was nearly eleven, I had been sent in July to spend the holiday in a village near Moscow with a relation of mine called T., whose house was full of guests, fifty, or perhaps more.... I don't remember, I didn't count. The house was full of noise and gaiety. It seemed as though it were a continual holiday, which would never end. It seemed as though our host had taken a vow to squander all his vast fortune
...12) Gentle Spirit
"The Gentle Spirit" sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. (from Goodreads)
Also known as "The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree," this is a Christmas-time short story. The author begins by telling us he has made this story up, but that even so, he thinks it must have actually happened—on Christmas Eve, in a great town, at a time of terrible frost.
The boy of the title, "six years old or younger," awakens in a frigid cellar, reaches for his mother, and finds she is "as cold
...The story originated from two separate pieces: "Another Man's Wife" and "A Jealous Husband" (published in 1848 in the journal "Notes of the Fatherland"). In preparing the 1859 two-volume collected works, the writer combined both in one story — "Another Man’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed". The first part only slightly changed certain lines, while the second part is more significantly altered.
In
...Living in a squalid room in St. Petersburg, the indigent but proud Rodion Raskolnikov believes he is above society. Obsessed with the idea of breaking the law, Raskolnikov resolves to kill an old pawnbroker for her cash.
Although the murder and robbery are bungled, Raskolnikov manages to escape without being seen. And with nothing to prove his guilt and a mendacious confessor in police custody, Raskolnikov seems to have
...Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Underground Man, who represents the voice of his generation. An emotional, paranoid knot of contradictions, the spiteful narrator is also desperate to join a society he loathes, if only to prove his superiority to it.
Exploring
...The Karamazov brothers are as different as mind, body, and spirit. Ivan, an atheist and brooding intellectual; Dmitri, a volatile sensualist and his father’s rival for the beautiful Grushenka; and Alexey, driven by unshakeable piety. In their shadow is their rejected half-brother, humiliated into servitude. Together they act to rid themselves of the dissolute Karamazov patriarch. Then, in a single shocking act, the fates of the brothers
...18) White Nights
"White Nights" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, originally published in 1848, early in the writer's career. Like many of Dostoevsky's stories, "White Nights" is told in the first person by a nameless narrator. The narrator is a young man living in Saint Petersburg who suffers from loneliness. He gets to know and falls in love with a young woman, but the love remains unrequited as the woman misses her lover, with
...Originally published in 1862, The House of the Dead is based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s own four-year imprisonment in Siberia for his involvement in the Petrashevsky Circle. This masterpiece of Russian literature begins with a nameless narrator coming upon former convict Aleksandr Petrovich...
These short stories offer a dazzling glimpse of life in the Russian Empire and penetrating portraits of unforgettable characters. In the titular story, a lonely man has a chance meeting with a sad young woman. Learning that she is in love with another, the...