It is true that we think of novels before short stories when considering the Russian literary tradition, but all the great novelists wrote peerless short stories as well. And considering their profound influence on Russian novels and also operas, those short stories are sometimes unjustly overlooked. For the readers, the short story form is certainly a lot easier to assimilate – many of the great Russian short stories are real page-turners, and fun to read. They can provide an ideal introduction to Russian literature for anyone intimidated by the big novels and tend to cover a far wider social and geographical spectrum, so are just as valuable as sources of insight into the Russian mentality, past and present .In Great Russian Short Stories, the reader will find a great selection of short stories, written by notorious Russian authors, such as Gogol, Dostoevsky, Gorky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov... among others.