Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas

by Ivan Bunin, Robert Bowie (Translator)

The first Russian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, Ivan Bunin is often considered the last of the great Russian masters. Already renowned in Russia before the revolution, he fled the country in 1920 and lived the remainder of his life in France, where he continued to write for thirty years. Bunin made his name as a short-story writer with such masterpieces as "The Gentleman from San Francisco," the title piece in one of his collections and one of the stories in this volume. His last book of stories, Dark Avenues, was published in the 1940s. Among his longer works were a fictional autobiography, The Life of Arseniev (1930), and its sequel, Youth (1939), which were later collected into one volume, and two memoirs, The Accursed Days (1926), and Memories and Portraits (1950). He also wrote books on Tolstoy and Chekhov, both of whom he knew personally. Bunin, in fact, serves as a link-both personal and literary-between Tolstoy, whom he met as a young man, Chekhov, a close friend, and Vladimir Nabokov, who was influenced by Bunin early in his career and who moved in the same émigré literary circles in the twenties and thirties.

Bunin achieved his greatest mastery in the short story, and much of his finest work appears in this volume-the largest collection of his prose works ever published in English. In Robert Bowie's fine translation, with extensive annotations and a lengthy critical afterword, this work affords readers of English their first opportunity for a sustained encounter with a Russian classic, and one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

Genres: Russia, Russian Literature

718 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2006

About the author

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Russian: Иван Алексеевич Бунин) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.

Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary ( Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among anti-communist White emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.

He died November 8, 1953 in Paris.

Reviews

[U.R. Bowie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff, if I do say so myself. Since I wrote it.

[Klissia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bunin's tales never miss in quality but some here are boring, other are pure human condition and the soul of people from a country, in the abiss of death,nostalgia, nature , dead lovers, the divine and sinner. The ruins from old Rússia of Bunin's observations.Never again.

My favorite tale and a reread for this book is The Gentleman from San Francisco now that I know the was inspired in Death in Venice by Mann ,much more than before.

"thinking of something, but saying nothing..."

[Lisajean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ivan Bunin won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933 "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing." That's complimentary, but "strict" and "classical" are such rigid terms to apply to an author of such emotional, evocative, poetic prose.

I first read Bunin's stories in a Russian lit class in college, making him the sixteenth Nobel laureate I've read. "The Gentleman from San Francisco," "First Love," "Sunstroke," "Light Breathing," and my favorite, "A Cold Autumn"... they're all the kind of stories that are a pleasure to unpack and analyze in class while still holding on to some additional meaning that analysis can't quite get at. I see the "classical Russian traditions" most in Bunin's themes of love and death, as his stories can be read as a depressing reminder that love is fleeting and death comes for us all or, at the same time, as an invigorating moment to hold on to the moments of love and happiness in life, which are made all the more precious because they are fleeting.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skimmed the last bit, admittedly - 700 pages of short stories over a few months was a long haul - but some of these were truly wonderful.