9 h 9 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when lonely dreamers, proud husbands, and ambitious officials are left alone with their thoughts?
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Short Stories, St Petersburg holds tender hopes and bitter absurdities. In White Nights, a solitary dreamer meets Nastenka, a young woman with a hope of her own. In A Christmas Tree and a Wedding, an observer at a wealthy household's children's party notices the cold workings of ambition.
Other tales lead into stranger, darker rooms. Bobok follows Ivan Ivanovich as he overhears the dead among the graves. The Crocodile turns an official's bizarre predicament into comedy. A Gentle Creature enters a husband's troubled thoughts, while The Dream of a Ridiculous Man introduces someone who no longer believes anything matters.
What you’ll discover
- The ache of loneliness Walk the pale summer evenings with a dreamer who longs for real company.
- Ambition beneath polite manners Watch a children's party reveal what a cynical observer notices beneath wealth and rank.
- Laughter in strange places Meet Ivan Matveich, swallowed by a crocodile yet beginning to dream of fame.
- Voices that unsettle Follow an uneasy writer among graves where even the dead have something to say.
- A mind confronting silence Listen as a proud pawnbroker struggles to understand his marriage beside his wife's body.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy dark comedy, Russian city life, and quick stories about conscience, jealousy and kindness that you can take one evening at a time.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A kind old soldier tells of a thief
- Two friends trade letters full of schemes
- A general decides to bless a clerk's wedding
- Two jealous men meet outside a dark door
- A narrator imagines a freezing child at Christmas
- A memory of kindness softens a prison holiday
- A clerk is swallowed whole and enjoys the fame
- A writer overhears the dead chatting in a cemetery
- A man ready to die dreams of a sinless world
Who’s who
- Astafy IvanovitchAn old soldier and tailor who takes in a drunken drifter and tries to save him.
- Emelyan IlyitchA shabby, gentle drunk who follows his protector everywhere and cannot quite hold on to his honesty.
- Ivan Ilyitch PralinskyA newly made general who loves talking about humanity and wants his clerks to adore him.
- PseldonimovA poor registration clerk marrying into a house he hopes will lift him from misery.
- Ivan AndreyitchA respectable, jealous husband who rushes about Petersburg chasing proof of his wife's betrayal.
- Ivan MatveitchA vain official who is swallowed by a crocodile and dreams of becoming a famous thinker.
- KlinevitchA cynical young baron among the dead who wants everyone to drop shame and tell the truth.
- MareyA gentle serf plowing a field who comforts a frightened boy.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Nouvelles
A man hides under a stranger's bed while a lapdog barks, in nine tales of shame, jealousy and hope.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What would you do if your pity and your pride pulled in opposite directions? In this collection, Fyodor Dostoyevsky gathers nine tales of Petersburg clerks, jealous husbands, a freezing child and a man swallowed by a crocodile.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A kind old soldier tells of a thief
The collection opens with An Honest Thief, a story told inside a story. A lonely clerk takes in a lodger, the old soldier Astafy Ivanovitch, because his cook Agrafena insists. After a stranger steals an overcoat from the hallway, the soldier cannot stop fretting about it, and he says he once met an honest thief.
His tale is about Emelyan Ilyitch, a drunk and a beggar who attaches himself to Astafy in a tavern and follows him from room to room. Astafy decides to act as a father and guardian and tries to wean him from drink and set him to work. Emelyan answers every lecture with odd small news about quarrelling women and dropped banknotes, and he sleeps on the porch rather than risk anger.
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What are the stories in Dostoyevsky's Short Stories?
The collection holds An Honest Thief, A Novel in Nine Letters, An Unpleasant Predicament, Another Man's Wife, The Heavenly Christmas Tree, The Peasant Marey, The Crocodile, Bobok and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.
What is The Crocodile about?
It is a comic satire from 1865. An official named Ivan Matveitch is swallowed alive by a crocodile on show in Petersburg and talks from inside it. His friends, his wife and the owner argue over money, rank and ideas.
What does bobok mean in Dostoyevsky's story?
Bobok is a nonsense word muttered by a nearly decayed corpse. The writer hears about it in the cemetery, and it stands for the last faint spark of consciousness that the dead keep for a short while.
The author
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1821–1881 · Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist born in Moscow in 1821. He lived in Saint Petersburg and spent years in Siberia after his arrest in 1849. He wrote Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868–1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880). He died in Saint Petersburg in 1881.
More by Fiodor Dostoïevski
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