"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...

A new translation of stories by a 19th century Russian master. One story is on a madman convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know, another is on a downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by a new overcoat.

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides--Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Turgenev, among others--Sara Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news, traveling from rinsed northwestern beet fields and the Far Eastern Arctic tundra to the cauldron of nationƯalities, religions, and languages in the Caucasus. Bypassing major cities as much as possible, she goes instead to the places associated with the country's literary masters. With her, we see...