'It is only a bruise'A carefree Russian official has what seems to be a trivial accident...One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Here are some of Tolstoy's extraordinary short stories, from "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." in a masterly new translation, to "The Raid," "The Wood-felling," "Three Deaths," "Polikushka," "After the Ball," and "The Forged Coupon," all gripping and eloquent lessons on two of Tolstoy's most persistent themes: life and death. More experimental than his novels, Tolstoy's stories are essential reading for anyone interested in his development as one of the major writers and thinkers of his time.

This edition includes: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Happy Ever After, and The Cossacks. Mortality was one of Tolstoy's most persistent themes, and all of the stories in this volume are connected by this preoccupation, along with the author's simultaneous attempt to help us improve our lives.

This powerful novel, Tolstoy’s third major masterpiece, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, begins with a courtroom drama (the finest in Russian literature) all the more stunning for being based on a real-life event. Dmitri Nekhlyudov, called to jury service, is astonished to see in the dock, charged with murder, a young woman whom he once seduced, propelling her into prostitution. She is found guilty on a technicality, and he determines to overturn the verdict. This p...

The aristocratic Yevgeny Onegin has come into his inheritance, leaving the glamour of St Petersburg's social life behind to take up residence at his uncle's country estate. Master of the nonchalant bow, and proof of the fact that we shine despite our lack of education, the aristocratic Onegin is the very model of a social butterfly - a fickle dandy, liked by all for his wit and easy ways. When the shy and passionate Tatyana falls in love with him, Onegin condescendingly rejects her, and in...

'It was like walking along the knife-edge of the highest possible mountain range, seeing life on one side and death on the other in the form of two deep, gorgeous and gleaming seascapes.'This astonishing novella from 1908, newly translated for Little Black Classics by War and Peace translator Anthony Briggs, probes the emotions and experiences of seven people condemned to death in Tsarist Russia. A powerful and subtle exploration of the morality of capital punishment, it w...

"The Queen of Spades" is one of the most famous tales in Russian literature, and inspired the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky; in "The Stationmaster", from The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, Pushkin reworks the parable of the Prodigal Son; "Tsar Nikita and his Forty Daughters" is one of Pushkin’s bawdier early poems; and the narrative poem "The Bronze Horseman", inspired by a St Petersburg statue of Peter the Great, is one of Pushkin’s best-known and most influential works. The vo...

SummaryHello! Python fully covers the building blocks of Python programming and gives you a gentle introduction to more advanced topics such as object-oriented programming, functional programming, network programming, and program design. New (or nearly new) programmers will learn most of what they need to know to start using Python immediately.About this BookProgrammers love Python because it's fast and efficient. Shouldn't l...

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

'Why do I know a few more things? Why am I so clever altogether?'Self-celebrating and self-mocking autobiographical writings from Ecce Homo, the last work iconoclastic German philosopher Nietzsche wrote before his descent into madness.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the w...

'I could see that she was still terribly afraid, but I didn't soften anything; instead, seeing that she was afraid I deliberately intensified it.'Based on a St Petersburg news report, Dostoyevsky's searing tale of a man who drives his wife to suicide.

'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself'Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - incl...