Russian literature has a reputation for gloomy texts, especially during the late nineteenth century. This volume argues that a 'fin-de-siecle' mood informed Russian literature long before the chronological end of the nineteenth century, in ways that had significant impact on the development of Russian realism. Some chapters consider ideas more readily associated with fin-de-siecle Europe such as degeneration theory, biodeterminism, Freudian psychoanalysis or apocalypticism alongside earlier Russian realist texts by writers such as Turgenev, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. Other chapters explore the...

An essay collection that explores Russian literature and culture in relation to the late nineteenth-century fin de siecle.

The Man Booker International-winning author of Broken April and The Siege, Albania's most renowned novelist, and perennial Nobel Prize contender Ismail Kadare explores three giants of world literature--Aeschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare--through the lens of resisting totalitarianism.

In isolationist Albania, which suffered under a Communist dictatorship for nearly half a century, classic global literature reached Ismail Kadare across centuries and borders--and set him free. The struggles of Hamlet, Dante, and Aeschylus's tragic figures gave him an understanding of...