The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

A much neglected literary figure Ivan Bunin is one of Russia''s major writers and ranks with Tolstoy and Chekhov at the forefront of the Russian Realists. Drawing artistic inspiration from his personal experience these powerful evocative stories are set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russia of his youth in the countries that he visited and in France where he spent the last thirty years of his life. In the title story for example a family''s tour of fashionable European resorts comes to an unexpected end; ''Late Hour'' describes an old man''s return to the little Russian town in the steppes that he has not seen since his early youth; while ''Mitya''s Love'' explores the darker emotional reverberations of sexual experience. Throughout his stories there is a sense of the precariousness of existence an omnipresent awareness of the impermanence of human aspirations and achievements. “The Gentleman from San Francisco” is a masterpiece of Russian literature and an essential work of short fiction. Included in this collection are the stories “Gentle Breathing” “Kasimir Stanislavovitch” and “Son” all of which capture the breadth and intricacy of Bunin’s literary style.