Fyodor Sologub: 5 books

A dark classic of Russia's silver age, this blackly funny novel recounts a schoolteacher's descent into sadism, arson and murder. Mad, lascivious, sadistic and ridiculous, the provincial schoolteacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucinatory fantasies about acts of savagery and...

Classic Russian novel. According to Wikipedia: "Fyodor Sologub (1863- 1927) was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of fin de siecle literature and philosophy into Russian prose."

In "The Little Demon" Sologub has shown us how the evil within us peering out through our imagination makes all the world seem evil to us. In "The Created Legend," feeling perhaps the need of reacting from his morose creation Peredonov, the author has set himself the task of showing...

Hidden in the forest, the poet Trirodov attempts to secede from the troubled society of early twentieth century Russia to build his own utopia: a school for the quiet children he cares for. Nothing is ever that easy though, and his personal connections to the outside world tie him into the political...

The Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main hero, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting. He is at once a victim, a monster,...