Many of the greatest Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin, produced crime and mystery fiction, a type of literature that was largely suppressed during theSoviet era because it did not glorify the state but, instead, gaveindividual characters the significance that the U.S.S.R. despised.With the fall of the Soviet Union, mystery writers have becomesome of the most successful novelists in Russia, and there is arenewed interest in, and appreciation of, the great crime classicsof an earlier era. There have been few policemen, and virtually no private detectives or amateur sleuths, in Russian history worthy of approbation, and in consequence its literature is dramatically differentfrom its Western counterparts. Criminals in Mother Russia tend tobe caught or punished by their own consciences or by ghosts, andthe notion of a criminal trial as we know it is utterly alien. Nonetheless, the enormous talent and passion of Russian authors haslong been justly acclaimed, and the rare forays they made into theloosely defined genre of mystery fiction rank among the world'sclassics. This volume is the first collection ever devoted entirely toRussian crime fiction. Among the esteemed contributors are Anton Chekhov, FyodorDostoevsky, Nicolai Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, VilLipitov, Alexander Pushkin, Lev Sheinen, Boris Sokoloff and LeoTolstoy.
