Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings

He was the writer, according to Dostoyevsky, who ‘showed us a whole gallery of genuinely beautiful Russian characters which he discovered in the Russian people.’ Pushkin would go in the autumn to write at his family’s house in the country at Boldino, and there he produced his first prose masterpiece, the Tales of Belkin. These stories are wonderful in their purity of form, their humour and understatement. Alongside the Tales, this volume also contains a selection of his other writings, including the novel fragment Roslavlev, the Egyptian Nights, and Pushkin’s autobiographical Journey to Arzrum.