Peter the Great's African

<b>Newly translated unfinished works about power class conflict and artistic inspiration by Russia's greatest poet.</b><br><br>Alexander Pushkin Russia&#146;s foundational writer was constantly experimenting with new genres and this fresh selection ushers readers into his creative laboratory. Politics and history weighed heavily on Pushkin&#146;s imagination and in &#147;Peter the Great&#146;s African&#148; he depicts the Tsar through the eyes of one of his closest confidantes Ibrahim a former slave modeled on Pushkin&#146;s maternal great-grandfather. At once outsider and insider Ibrahim offers a sympathetic yet questioning view of Peter&#146;s attempt to integrate his vast archaic empire into Europe. In the witty &#147;History of the Village of Goriukhino&#148; Pushkin employs parody and self-parody to explore problems of writing history while &#147;Dubrovsky&#148; is both a gripping adventure story and a vivid picture of provincial Russia in the late eighteenth century with its class conflicts ready to boil over in violence. &#147;The Egyptian Nights&#148; an effervescent mixture of prose and poetry reflects on the nature of artistic inspiration and the problem of the poet&#146;s place in a rapidly changing and ever more commercialized society.