This edition of Ivan Bunin’s Short Fiction was produced from various translations. “Figures” and “Elijah, the Prophet” were translated by The Russian Review and originally published in 1916. “The Gent...

My dear boy, when you grow up will you remember how, one winter evening, you came into the dining room, stopped on the threshold, for it was after one of our quarrels, and lowered your eyes with such ...

My dear boy, when you grow up will you remember how, one winter evening, you came into the dining room, stopped on the threshold, for it was after one of our quarrels, and lowered your eyes with such ...

That morning you awoke with a new thought, a new dream, that overmastered your whole soul. You were suddenly filled with an ambition to taste of pleasures heretofore unknown: to own your own books wit...

You devised an excellent game. You would jump up into the air, then strike the ground with your feet, as hard as you could, and accompany this with a shriek that caused our eardrums to approach the bu...

The pain of the blow, the sudden and sharp humiliation that struck your very heart in one of the most joyful moments of your childhood, caused you to set up such a dreadful cry, in such a high-pitched...

“And we made our peace immediately?” you ask. Oh, no. I was firm to the end. It was at least a half-hour after you became quiet that I came to the nursery. But how? I opened the door with a serious fa...

The lamp in the nursery was not lit, and the windows were dark blue. Outside, a winter evening was coming on fast, and it was dreary in the room. You were still sitting on the floor, moving your match...

Do you remember how timidly you came out of the nursery, and what you said to me? “Uncle,” you said, exhausted by your struggle for happiness, and still thirsting for it. “Uncle, forgive me, please.” ...

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!⁠ ⁠… This is a tale of the death of a prophet⁠—peace to his ashes!⁠—told that the doubters may be convinced of the need for submission to The Leader...

My life has been a well-spent one; I got everything I went after. I even own real property⁠—my little old man right after the wedding signed the house over in my name; and I keep horses, and two cows,...

The sky had been silvery with stars all night long, the fields beyond the garden and the threshing floor was darkling evenly, and the windmill, with the two horns of its wings, showed sharply black ag...

The sky had been silvery with stars all night long, the fields beyond the garden and the threshing floor was darkling evenly, and the windmill, with the two horns of its wings, showed sharply black ag...

Ivan, as always, maintained a portentous silence. Kiriushka was not at all interested in whatever they were talking about; he lay thinking his own thoughts⁠—mostly about an accordion, the purchase of ...

Theodot began speaking even more plainly, after a general silence and a muttering of: “Ye-es⁠ ⁠… well done.⁠ ⁠…” “Well, now,” he began slowly, lying back on his elbow and casting an occasional glance ...

Theodot’s tone had become so simple, so sincere, so filled with the tones of husbandry aggrieved, that it would never have entered anybody’s head that here was a murderer, confessing his sin. Then, to...

There was a silence. Theodot raised himself up to a sitting posture, and, bending down, spreading his hands, began slowly to unwind the cords with which his old, constantly falling foot-cloths were ti...

There was a fire that Spring at Semyon Novikov’s, who lived with his thin-armed brother, Nikon, at Ovsiany Brod. Then the brothers decided to divide their property, and Semyon was to build a new house...

When he had been a young man, everybody used to call Alexander Romanov Shasha; at that time he was living in the settlement of Limovo, in an iron-roofed house that stood facing the common, and his bea...

On St. Thomas’ week, on a clear evening barely tinged with rose, at that enchanting time when the earth has just been freed from the snow, when, in the little hollows upon the steppes, underneath the ...

The road out of Colombo, lying along the ocean, runs through dense coconut groves. To the right, within their sun-dappled shady depths, under the high canopy of feathery broom-like treetops, are scatt...

A certain Ivlev was once travelling, in the beginning of June, to a distant region of his provence. The tarantass, with its dusty top all awry, had been given him by his brother-in-law, at whose estat...

The gentleman from San Francisco⁠—nobody either in Capri or Naples ever remembered his name⁠—was setting out with his wife and daughter for the Old World, to spend there two years of pleasure. He was ...

Madame Maraud was born and grew up in Lausanne, in a strict, honest, industrious family. She did not marry young, but she married for love. In March, 1876, among the passengers on an old French ship, ...

In the cemetery above a fresh mound of earth stands a new cross of oak⁠—strong, heavy, smooth, a pleasant thing to look at. It is April, but the days are grey. From a long way off one can see through ...

In that community, in that forest village where Aglaia was born and had grown up, she was called Anna. She was bereaved of her father and mother at an early age. The smallpox visited the village one w...

What does it matter of whom we speak? Any that have lived and that live upon this earth deserve to be the subject of our discourse. Once upon a time Chang had come to know the universe and the captain...

This muzhik of Briansk had been brought from the village to Moscow when he was a little boy; he had run errands at a merchant’s warehouse in Iliyinka; he used to fly like an arrow to taverns to get ho...

On the yellow card with a nobleman’s coronet the young porter at the Hotel “Versailles” somehow managed to read the Christian name and patronymic “Kasimir Stanislavovitch.”15 There followed something ...

His is a tale thrice beautiful in its brevity and unpretentiousness, its meaning and the manner of its telling; a tale of the love of Gautami, the saintly and the beatified, who, without knowing it he...

October 7th, 19⁠— On this picture postcard with a grand and gloomy view of the shores of the Atlantic by moonlight, I hasten to write my warm thanks to you for your last book. This place⁠—my adopted c...

Blind Alley would be the nearest English equivalent. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ Wife-of-a-regiment. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ A great Russian general and a universal military genius and strategist. —⁠B. G. G. ↩ “Spindle-Shanks!...