The stories translated in this fascinating anthology reveal the peculiarly Russian world of fantasy: conversations among corpses in a graveyard; a skeleton bounding up to its undertaker at a party; a dead man's account of the wasteland of the afterlife; a woman disappearing into a mirror to become the refleciton within. Are these really incursions into other worlds, or are the characters quite simply mad? Marily Minto gives brief biographical details for each author along with an analysis of the story, providing both general readers and students of Russian literature with a basis on which to build their own interpretations.

Contents:

• The Coffin-Maker by Alexander Pushkin
• St. John's Eve by Nikolai Gogol
• The Ghost by Vladimir Odoevsky
• Stoss by Mikhail Lermontov
• The White Eagle (A Ghost Story) by Nikolai Leskov
• Bobok by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Song of Triumphant Love by Ivan Turgenev
• Between Life and Death by Aleksey Apukhtin
• In the Mirror by Valery Bryusov
• The Grand Slam by Leonid Andreyev