This collection of Pushkin’s stories begins with ‘The Queen of Spades’, perhaps the most celebrated short story in Russian literature. The young Hermann, while watching some friends gambling, hears a rumour of how an officer’s grandmother is always able to predict the three winning cards in a game. He becomes obsessed with the woman and her seemingly mystical powers, and seeks to extract the secret from her at any cost.

This volume, part of a new series of the complete works of Pushkin in English, also includes ‘Dubrovsky’, the story of a man’s desire to avenge himself after his land is unjustly taken from him by an aristocrat; ‘The Negro of Peter the Great’, a tale inspired by Pushkin’s maternal grandfather; and the unfinished story ‘Egyptian Nights’, a meditation on poetry and the poet. Together, they represent some of the most striking and enduring pieces of Pushkin’s prose fiction.

The full list of stories contained is as follows: ‘The Queen of Spades’, ‘Kirdzhali’, ‘The Negro of Peter the Great’, ‘The Guests Were Arriving at the Dacha…’, ‘A Novel in Letters’, ‘Notes of a Young Man’, ‘My Fate Is Sealed: I Am Getting Married’, ‘A Fragment’, ‘In the Corner of a Small Square’, ‘Roslavlev’, ‘A Novel at a Caucasian Spa’, ‘Dubrovsky’, ‘A Tale of Roman life’, ‘Maria Schoning’, A Russian Pelham’, ‘We Were Spending the Evening at Princess D.’s Dacha’, ‘Egyptian Nights’, ‘In 179– I was Returning’, ‘The Last of the Lineage of Joan of Arc’