'At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades winked and grinned. The extraordinary likeness struck him . . . "The old woman!" he cried in horror'

Universally acknowledged as his nation's greatest poet, Pushkin was also a master of prose, whose works expanded the boundaries of Russian storytelling. This collection of his prose writing ranges from satires to comedies, travel narratives to imaginative historical fiction, and includes his greatest stories- the haunting dreamworld of 'The Queen of Spades', the five short 'Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin' and the novella The Captain's Daughter, which has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.

Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky