“All the horror is in just this, that there is no horror⁠ ⁠…”...

I know that many will find this novel immoral and indecent; nevertheless, I dedicate it with all my heart to mothers and youths A. K....

I dedicate the labour of translation, in all humility and sincerity, to K. Andrae B. G. G....

“With us, you see,” Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece, say in Yama, “they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, ab...

A word must be said of Kuprin’s style. He is by no means a purist; his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign⁠—or, rather, outlandish⁠—words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and Russianizing s...

A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the stage-drivers⁠—both government and private⁠—used to live, from generation to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large southern city. An...

A long, long time ago, long before the railroads, the stage-drivers⁠—both government and private⁠—used to live, from generation to generation, at the very farthest confine of a large southern city. An...

Two in the afternoon. In the second-rate, two-rouble establishment of Anna Markovna everything is plunged in sleep. The large square parlor with mirrors in gilt frames, with a score of plush chairs pl...

Little by little they all crawl apart out of the room. It is dark in the house. It smells sweetly of the half-withered sedge. Quiet reigns. Until dinner, which is served at six in the evening, the tim...

The late twilight came on, and after it the warm, dark night, but for long, until very midnight, did the deep crimson glow of the sky still smoulder. Simeon, the porter of the establishment, has lit a...

There did take place, however, in the house of Anna Markovna, one strange episode, with a workaday beginning, and an enigmatic, sinister ending, incomprehensible to the minds of Yama. One evening in w...

The windows are opened wide to the fragrant darkness of the evening, and the tulle curtains stir faintly back and forth from the imperceptible movement of the air. It smells of dewy grass from the con...

The elderly guest in the uniform of the Department of Charity walked in with slow, undecided steps, at each step bending his body a little forward and rubbing his palms with a circular motion, as thou...

Little by little the drawing room was filling. There came Roly-Poly, long known to all Yama⁠—a tall, thin, red-nosed, gray old man, in the uniform of a forest ranger, in high boots, with a wooden yard...

They had all, except the reporter, passed the whole day together, from the very morning, celebrating May Day with some young women of their acquaintance. They had rowed in boats on the Dnieper, had co...

“Well now, gentlemen, this isn’t fit for pigs,” Yarchenko was saying, grumblingly, at the entrance of Anna Markovna’s establishment. “If we finally have gone, we might at least have chosen a decent pl...

She greeted all the men without embarrassment, with the independent bearing of the first personage in the house, and sat down near Sergei Ivanich, behind his chair. She had just gotten free from that ...

At this moment Simeon walked into the cabinet with a tray upon which stood two goblets of a bubbling golden wine and lay a large visiting card. “May I ask which of you here might be Mister Gavrila Pet...

Of the girls only two remained in the cabinet⁠—Jennie, who had come in her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large plush...

Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile inhabitants of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy, foul, bloody events, which began with a series of trifling, small affrays,...

Even to this day, after a lapse of ten years, the erstwhile inhabitants of the Yamkas recall that year, abounding in unhappy, foul, bloody events, which began with a series of trifling, small affrays,...

The passenger train sped merrily from the south to the north, traversing golden fields of wheat and beautiful groves of oak, careering with rumbling upon iron bridges over bright rivers, leaving behin...

All the stories of Horizon about his commercial travelling were simply brazen and glib lying. All the samples of drapers’ goods, suspenders Gloire and buttons Helios, the artificial teeth and insertib...

Horizon lived at the Hotel Hermitage for not more than three days and nights, and during this time he managed to see some three hundred people. His arrival seemed to enliven the big, gay port city. To...

With the arrival of Horizon (however, God knows how he was called: Gogolevich, Gidalevich, Okunev, Rosmitalsky), in a word, with the arrival of this man everything changed on Yamskaya Street. Enormous...

Immediately at the entrance to a suburban cabaret an artificial flower bed shone with varicolored lights, with electric bulbs instead of flowers; and just such another fiery alley of wide, half-round ...

On the way to Yamskaya Street, Rovinskaya said to Volodya: “You’ll bring me at first into the most luxurious place, then into a medium one, and then into the filthiest.” “My dear Ellena Victorovna,” w...

On Thursday, since very morning, a ceaseless, fine drizzle had begun to fall, and so the leaves of the chestnuts, acacias, and poplars had at once turned green. And, suddenly, it became somehow dreami...

On that early morning when Likhonin so suddenly, and, perhaps, unexpectedly even to himself had carried off Liubka from the gay establishment of Anna Markovna, it was the height of summer. The trees s...

The room in which Likhonin lived was situated on the fifth story and a half. And a half, because there are such five, six, and seven-story profitable houses, packed to overflowing and cheap, on top of...

Likhonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of kerosene fumes from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the odour of stagnant bad tobacco. The daylight dully penetrated only near the ...

With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Likhonin without undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and...

“And that’s splendid⁠ ⁠… And fine and charming,” Likhonin was saying, bustling about the lame table and without need shifting the tea things from one place to another. “For a long time, like an old cr...

It was not far to The Sparrows restaurant, some two hundred steps. On the way Liuba, unnoticed, took Likhonin by the sleeve and pulled him toward her. In this wise they lagged a few steps behind Solov...

Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many, there is a decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of the Russian land and culture, who would be able heroically, without the ...

Justice must be rendered to Likhonin; he did everything to create for Liubka a quiet and secure existence. Since he knew that they would have to leave their mansard anyway⁠—this bird house, rearing ab...

But if the Georgian and the kind-souled Soloviev served as a palliating beginning against the sharp thorns of great worldly wisdom, in the curious education of the mind and soul of Liubka; and if Liub...

All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka’s shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragicomical history proved altogether unlike what it had been in reality. Li...

All this Liubka told at length and disjointedly, sobbing on Jennka’s shoulder. Of course, in her personal elucidation this tragicomical history proved altogether unlike what it had been in reality. Li...

Kolya Gladishev was a fine, merry, bashful young lad, with a large head; pink-cheeked, with a funny little white, bent line, as though from milk, on his upper lip, under the light down of the moustach...

It was still early⁠—about nine⁠—of a rainy August evening. The illuminated drawing room in the house of Anna Markovna was almost empty. Only near the very doors a young telegraph clerk was sitting, hi...

A fine rain, like dust, obstinate and tedious, had been drizzling since morning. Platonov was working in the port, unloading watermelons. At the mill, where he had since the very summer proposed to es...

Saturday was the customary day of the doctor’s inspection, for which they prepared very carefully and with quaking in all the houses; as, however, even society ladies prepare themselves, when getting ...

That very same day, at evening, a very important event took place in the house of Anna Markovna: the whole institution⁠—with land and house, with live and inanimate stock⁠—passed into the hands of Emm...

On the next day, on Sunday, Tamara had a multitude of cares. She had become possessed by a firm and undeviating thought of burying her friend despite all circumstances, in the way that one’s nearest a...

On the next day, on Monday, toward ten o’clock in the morning, almost all the inmates of the house⁠—formerly Madame Shaibes’, but now Emma Edwardovna Titzner’s⁠—rode off in cabs to the centre of the c...

And in reality, the words of Tamara proved to be prophetic: since the funeral of Jennie not more than two weeks had passed, but during this brief space of time so many events burst over the house of E...

This book has had a circulation, throughout the world, of more than two million copies⁠—in Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Bohemian, Hungarian, Englis...

“Houses of Suffrance”⁠—i.e., Houses of the Necessary Evil. —⁠Trans. ↩ The Russian term is “pharaoh.” —⁠Trans. ↩ A German exclamation of disgust or contempt, corresponding to the English fie. —⁠Trans. ...