Caryl Emerson: 3 books

'The people are silent' So ends Pushkin's great historical drama Boris Godunov, in which Boris's reign as Tsar witnesses civil strife and intrigue, brutality and misery. Its legacy is an uncertain future for the new Tsar whose inauguration is met with devastating silence by the people. Pushkin's dramatic...

Of the thirty volumes in the authoritative Academy edition of Chekhov's collected works, fully twelve are devoted to the writer's letters. This is the first book in English or Russian addressing this substantial—though until now neglected—epistolary corpus. The majority of the essays gathered...

All the Same the Words Don't Go Away brings together twenty-five years of essays and reviews, linked loosely by three themes. The first explores the legacy of Mikhail Bakhtin: his ideas of dialogue and carnival, and the debates ignited by each. The second delves into three "master workers" of the Russian...