Alexander Pushkin

“A mock-heroic fairy-tale poem of old Kiev. On her wedding night Ludmila, daughter of Prince Vladimir, is carried off by the dwarf wizard Chernomor. Her bridegroom, the knight Ruslan, and his three rivals ride out to find her. Through enchanted castles, a battlefield of bones, a giant living Head and a magic beard, Ruslan wins his way to her — only to be murdered on the road home by a cowardly rival, and brought back to life by a wise old Finn in time to save Kiev.”

“Four short verse dramas written in the autumn of 1830, each a study of one passion carried to its end. A miserly old baron gloats over his chests of gold while his son goes in debt; the composer Salieri, consumed by envy, poisons his friend Mozart; Don Juan seduces the widow of the man he killed and invites the dead man's statue to supper; and in a London stricken by plague, revellers feast and sing in defiance of death.”

“Moscow, 1598–1605. Boris Godunov, suspected of having the boy Tsarevich Dmitry murdered, is begged by the people to take the crown, and rules wisely but without love. In a monastery cell a young monk, Grigory Otrepyev, hears the old chronicler Pimen tell of the murder, and resolves to rise as the dead Tsarevich. He escapes to Poland, wins the proud Marina Mniszech and an army, and marches on Russia, while Boris, tormented by conscience, dies in his palace. The play ends with the new Tsar's men murdering Boris's children, and the people falling silent.”

“Five short tales, presented by a 'publisher' as the work of a modest country squire, the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, who heard them from various people. A retired officer waits six years to take the pistol shot owed him in a duel; an elopement in a blizzard ends in a wedding with the wrong man; a gloomy Moscow undertaker invites his dead clients to a housewarming; a stationmaster loses his only daughter to a passing hussar; and a squire's daughter dresses as a peasant girl to meet the son of her father's enemy.”

“A novel in verse. Eugene Onegin, a bored young dandy of St Petersburg, inherits a country estate, makes friends with the young poet Lensky, and is loved by Tatyana Larina, a dreamy, serious girl who writes him a letter he coolly refuses. Out of idle spite he flirts with Lensky's fiancée Olga, kills his friend in a duel, and wanders the world; and when he meets Tatyana again, years later, a great lady in Petersburg, he falls in love with her — too late.”

“In Petersburg a young officer tells his friends how his grandmother, an old countess, once won back a ruinous gambling debt in Paris with three cards whose secret she has kept for sixty years. Hermann, a careful, ambitious engineer who never gambles, cannot forget the story. He courts the countess's poor ward to get into the house, confronts the old woman in her bedroom at night — and frightens her to death. Then the dead woman comes to him with the secret: three, seven, ace.”

“An old man's memoir of his youth. Pyotr Grinyov, a nobleman's son of seventeen, is sent to serve in a tiny fortress on the Orenburg steppe, falls in love with the commandant's daughter Masha, and fights a duel for her with the sly officer Shvabrin. Then the Cossack Pugachov rises in revolt, claiming to be the murdered Tsar, and takes the fortress — and Grinyov finds that the rebel is the vagabond he once gave a hareskin coat in a snowstorm. Between loyalty and gratitude, honour and love, he must rescue Masha; and in the end it is Masha who must rescue him.”

“A Petersburg tale in verse. Peter the Great, standing on the empty marshes by the Neva, dreams of a city that will open a window onto Europe; a hundred years later it stands in granite and splendour. Then, in the great flood of November 1824, a poor clerk named Evgeny loses the girl he meant to marry and his reason with her. Wandering the city, he threatens the bronze statue of Peter — and in his madness hears the Horseman galloping after him through the empty streets.”