Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Note on the Text
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Third Edition
Preface to the Fourth Edition
1. Apollo and Tamara
2. People
3. A Terrible Night
4. What the Nightingale Sang
5. A Merry Adventure
6. Lilacs in Bloom
Notes
Mikhail Zoshchenko (1894–1958) was a leading Soviet satirist. His
stories of the 1920s made him enormously popular with readers. In
1946 he was expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union. He never
recovered from this trauma and died of heart failure in 1958.
Boris Dralyuk is the editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the
Russian Revolution (2016) and coeditor of The Penguin Book of
Russian Poetry (2015).
The only thing harder than cracking jokes may be translating them.
Perhaps this is why Mikhail Zoshchenko remains a lesser-known
Russian writer among English-language readers, despite being one of
the Soviet Union’s most beloved humorists, a satirist in the best
traditions of Gogol. Boris Dralyuk’s new translation of Sentimental
Tales, a collection of Zoshchenko’s stories from the 1920s, is a
delight that brings the author’s wit to life
*The Economist*
A book that would make Gogol guffaw.
*Kirkus Reviews*
If you find Chekhov a bit tame and want a more bite to your
fiction, then you need a dose of Zoshchenko, the premier Russian
satirist of the twentieth century. . . . The translations, as we
would expect of Dralyuk, are light and fluid, allowing the full
bite of Zoshchenko’s voice to power through. Snap up this thin
volume and enjoy.
*Russian Life*
Mikhail Zoshchenko masterfully exhibits a playful seriousness. . .
. Juxtaposing joyful wit with the bleakness of Soviet Russia,
Sentimental Tales is a potent antidote for Russian literature’s
dour reputation.
*Foreword Reviews*
Superb . . . a collection of six of Zoshchenko’s marvelous longer
stories written between 1923 and 1929.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
Boris Dralyuk is to be commended for a jaunty translation that
keeps pace with the author’s whimsical self-amusement, tickling the
reader in turn.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Zoshchenko's stories are vignettes and anecdotes: short, written in
simple language, often paradoxical, and always very funny.
*Russia Beyond*
Essential for all lovers of Russian literature in its many forms.
Humorous, profound, multi-faceted and tragic, these Sentimental
Tales will have you laughing and crying at the same time.
*Shiny New Books*
Boris Dralyuk’s translation allows the reader to enjoy Zoschenko’s
playfully evasive relationship with ‘truth’ that allowed him to
briefly function as such an atypical Soviet author. . . .
Zoschenko’s wry assessment of the workings of state bureaucracy and
their impact on the individual calls to mind the surreality of
Nikolai Gogol’s Petersburg stories, recast in an age when the
system has acquired new rulers but is largely unchanged
nonetheless.
*Russian Art + Culture*
Zoshchenko’s Sentimental Tales are here to entertain the
reader.
*Tony's Reading List*
The connections between the stories of love, life and regret are
the absurdities and meaninglessness of life. Love, success, comfort
are all set against the instability and unpredictability of Russian
society. One can strive for decades and it will all be for nought.
Reading these reminded me of Dostoevsky’s lighter work.
Wonderful.
*His Futile Preoccupations*
Dralyuk’s renderings provide worthy updates, largely successful in
employing different registers to capture Zoshchenko’s sparkling
hodge-podge of colloquialisms and formal locutions.
*Rain Taxi Review of Books*
In the face of ideological pressure to produce heroic forms,
Zoshchenko’s playful, sly, gallows-humored Sentimental Tales
responds with superfluous men. If life is a comedy for those who
think and a tragedy for those who feel, Zoshchenko gives us comedy
silhouetted in unspoken tragedy. This many-layered pleasure is
brought closer to the contemporary reader by a nimble translation
by Boris Dralyuk.
*Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and
Paint It Black*
I know of no satirist more angry, more warlike than Mikhail
Zoshchenko. Yet I love him not for his anger, I love him for his
astonishing irony—for the fact that it is sometimes difficult to
determine the target of his mockery: is it his characters, his
readers, himself? This new translation preserves Zoshchenko’s irony
in all its force.
*Andrey Kurkov, author of Death and the Penguin*
Mikhail Zoshchenko is one of Russia’s great humorists, not only of
the Soviet era but of all time. Boris Dralyuk’s translation of
Sentimental Tales reads beautifully, and the English language work
is a real tour de force. It transmits Zoshchenko’s quirky style
while still maintaining a natural, easy flow, with well-judged
rhythms and cadences that echo Zoshchenko’s own.
*Lesley Milne, University of Nottingham*
Zoshchenko is the wittiest and most perceptive of Soviet satirists.
Boris Dralyuk is the first translator to succeed in bringing his
wit into English. Comedy is largely a matter of timing, and
Dralyuk, like Zoshchenko himself, has an impeccable sense of
rhythm.
*Robert Chandler, translator of Vasily Grossman, Andrei Platonov,
Teffi, and many others*
Zoshchenko’s satirical prowess brought him fame in the Soviet
Union, and these Sentimental Tales, with their dark humor and sharp
parody, rank among his best writings. Boris Dralyuk’s fine
translations succeed wonderfully in conveying the innovative style
and unique narrative voice of the originals.
*Barry Scherr, Dartmouth College*
A re-packaging of Zoshchenko for a new generation in dire need of
dark humor, and of the sparkling wit of both author and
translator.
*The Russian Review*
A gift to the English-speaking world. . . . Boris Dralyuk’s
translation faithfully recreates the paradoxes that make
Sentimental Tales enigmatic, hilarious, and devastating.
*Translation and Literature*
Boris Dralyuk’s 2018 translation is truly a gift to the
Englishspeaking world. This is first time they have been published
together in a cohesive English-language collection. Boris Dralyuk’s
translation faithfully recreates the paradoxes that make
Sentimental Tales enigmatic, hilarious, and devastating.
*Translations and Literature*
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