The Short Fiction of Ivan Bunin

This collection gathers the short fiction of Ivan Bunin, the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. At its center is “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” the story of a rich American who sails to Europe expecting years of leisure, only to have death interrupt his plans with cold indifference. Around it stand tales of Russian country life, fading estates, peasants, desire, and loss, all rendered in Bunin’s precise, unsentimental prose and his sharp eye for physical detail. He writes about mortality and love without moralizing, letting each scene speak for itself. These stories show why he was admired by readers from Chekhov to Nabokov. This free PDF and EPUB edition collects them for new readers.