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Title details for The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense by BJ Harrison - Available

The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense

by BJ Harrison
Otto Penzler
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
A collection of the greatest Russian crime and mystery fiction-including stories by Akunin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Nabokov, Pushkin, and Tolstoy. Many of the greatest Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Pushkin, produced crime and mystery fiction, a type of literature that was largely suppressed during the Soviet era because it did not glorify the state, but rather, gave significance to individual characters. With the fall of the Soviet Union, mystery writers have become some of the most successful novelists in Russia, and there is a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, the great crime classics of an earlier era. There have been few policemen, and virtually no private detectives or amateur sleuths, in Russian history worthy of approbation, and in consequence its literature is dramatically different from its Western counterparts. Criminals in Mother Russia tend to be caught or punished by their own consciences or by ghosts, and the notion of a criminal trial as we know it is utterly alien. Nonetheless, the enormous talent and passion of Russian authors has long been justly acclaimed, and the rare forays they made into the loosely defined genre of mystery fiction rank among the world's classics. This volume is the first collection ever devoted entirely to Russian crime fiction.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 30, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696604758
      • File size: 422004 KB
      • Duration: 14:39:10

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 18, 2010
      Penzler's anthology of Russian crime stories doesn't quite live up to the billing of its title, given the mediocrity of P. Nikitin's "The Strangler," a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that cribs from Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." Fortunately, that tale is the sole dud among the 19 selections, many of which were penned by such 19th-century literary giants as Gogol, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, whose short but powerful "Sleepy" depicts an overworked servant girl driven by despair to commit murder. The most interesting story is Lev Sheinen's "The Hunting Knife," in which the author, a former prosecutor for Stalin during the purge trials of the 1930s, introduces an impossible crime element. The murder scene from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment may strike some as padding, while others will wonder why Penzler (Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop) includes no examples of contemporary Russian noir.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This audiobook collection of Russian mystery and crime short stories and excerpts from larger works includes classics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as some lesser-known works. Authors include Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Bunin, and Nabokov, among others. BJ Harrison provides a spirited and expressive narration of all the works. His voice is clear, and he adroitly gives unique voices to the various characters when reading dialogue. Mystery, crime, and suspense stories do not often come to mind when considering Russian literature, so this collection will be a pleasant surprise to those who wish to see another aspect of Russian works. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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