One of the great achievements of twentieth-century Russian émigré literature, Dark Avenues – translated here for the first time into English in its entirety – took Bunin’s poetic mastery of language to new heights.

Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of the Russian cultural and historical crises of the preceding decades, this collection of short fiction centres around dark, erotic liaisons. Love – in its many varied forms – is the unifying motif in a rich range of narratives, characterized by the evocative, elegiac, elegant prose for which Bunin is renowned.

Contents: ‘Dark Avenues’, ‘The Caucasus’, ‘A Ballad’, ‘Styopa’, ‘Muza’, ‘A Late Hour’, ‘Rusya’, ‘A Beauty’, ‘The Simpleton’, ‘Antigone’, ‘An Emerald’, ‘The Visitor’, ‘Wolves’, ‘Calling Cards’, ‘Zoyka and Valeria’, ‘Tanya’, ‘In Paris’, ‘Galya Ganskaya’, ‘Heinrich’, ‘Natalie’, ‘Upon a Long-Familiar Street’, ‘A Riverside Inn’, ‘The Godmother’, ‘The Beginning’, ‘The Oaklings’, ‘Miss Klara’, ‘Madrid’, ‘A Second Pot of Coffee’, ‘Iron Coat’, ‘A Cold Autumn’, ‘The Steamer Saratov’, ‘The Raven’, ‘The Camargue’, ‘One Hundred Rupees’, ‘Vengeance’, ‘The Swing’, ‘Pure Monday’, ‘The Chapel’.

This edition also contains extra material about the author’s life, works and film adaptations. There is also an appendix containing ‘Dark Avenues’ in the original Russian, as well as the short stories ‘In Spring, in Judaea’ and ‘A Place for the Night’.