The Russian twentieth-century short story

"The articles in the Critical Companion offer analyses of Russian short stories that encompass the major aesthetic and thematic concern of the short story genre in the twentieth century. Each article focuses on a single story by authors ranging from Chekhov and Bunin to Nabokov and Shalamov, to Tolstaya and Pelevin; together they outline the developments in each author's oeuvre and in the subjects, structure, and themes of the twentieth-century Russian short story. The short story rises to prominence during periods of cultural and political transition when literary conventions and ideologies lose some or most of their authority. The Russian twentieth-century short story in particular flourished in a century that saw an abundance of such shifts: cultural, ideological, and political. In this collection, American, European and Russian scholars discuss some of the best twentieth century Russian short stories and their recurrent themes of language's power and limits, of childhood and old age, of art and sexuality, and of cultural, individual and artistic memory. The Introduction provides a discussion of the short story genre and its socio-cultural function. The book will be of value to all scholars of Russian literature, the Short Story, and Genre theory."--BOOK JACKET.