Russian Tales of the Fantastic

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.