RRP: £12.95
BINDING: Paperback
PUBLISHED: 2012
ISBN: 9780946162802
PAGES: 224
V. Bryusov/M. Bulgakov/S. Krzhizhanovsky et al.
Red Spectres: Russian 20th-century Gothic-fantastic tales
Selected and translated from the Russian by Muireann Maguire
In the first decades of the 20th century the Gothic-fantastic genre flourished in Russia, despite official efforts to stamp it out. Few of these stories have been translated or published outside Russia – eleven vintage tales by seven writers of the period: Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Aleksandr Grin and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky; the lesser known but important figure Aleksandr Chayanov, whose story ‘Venediktov’ influenced Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita; and the émigrés Georgy Peskov and Pavel Perov.
At a time of revolution and civil war, hardship and deprivation, the supernatural genres provided means for a number of Russian writers to explore the dark underside of the machine age and the new political order.
‘This collection of Gothic, uncanny and supernatural tales from revolutionary Russia is a remarkable find. Who in the West knew that during and after the birth of the Soviet Union, phantoms, doubles and apparitions swept through the feverish imaginations of its major writers, from Bulgakov to Krzhizhanovsky? The tormented minds of their heroes reframe the trauma of change and war as hauntings and possessions.’ – Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
VALERY BRYUSOV (1873–1924) wrote many tales of horror and the supernatural. He is best known for his historical tale of the occult, The Fiery Angel.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV (1891–1940) has won a posthumous reputation as one of the great Russian comic writers.
ALEKSANDR CHAYANOV (1888–1937) was an unorthodox agrarian economist who wrote a small number of seminal stories in the Gothic-fantastic genre.
ALEKSANDR GRIN (1880–1932), soldier, sailor and modern romantic, is the author of numerous Symbolist and fantastic tales. He is best known for his novel Scarlet Sails.
SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY (1887–1950) was a Kiev-born journalist, playwright and scriptwriter. His experimental novels and short stories began to be published in Russia in the 1980s, and are now compared to the work of Borges and Kafka.
PAVEL PEROV, born in 1886, was a journalist and screenwriter who emigrated from Russia in 1910 and spent most of his life in America.
GEORGY PESKOV is the pseudonym of Elena Deisha (1895–1977), who emigrated to France after the Revolution. Her short stories feature primarily Russian characters confronted by supernatural or grotesque events.