I've always liked Maksim Gorky's short stories, the few I have read. His writing is direct, flowing, colorful. The characters are vibrant, as if outlined with black ink, and yet not overly simple or lacking in depth. The plots, as most plots go in short stories, are not complex--most of the stories are character studies, and yet, each story seems to reveal, almost without effort, some wonderfully true aspect of being a human being. What that true thing is may be difficult to pinpoint, nevertheless, one feels that something has been revealed to the reader that would have been obscure or even overlooked in another, lesser writer.
Contains: Makar Chudra; The Nightingale; Chelkash; On the Rafts; In the Steppe; Twenty-six Men and a Girl; A Man is Born; Music; The Nightmare; First Love; A Sky-Blue Life ( )

Stories spanning from 1892, Makar Chudra, to 1925, A Sky-Blue Life.
11 stories in all. 255 pages.