The Short Fiction of Vladimir Korolenko

A gathering of short fiction by Vladimir Korolenko, one of late-imperial Russia’s most humane storytellers. The collection ranges across Siberian exile, peasant life, and the country’s poor and dispossessed, drawn in part from the years the author himself spent under arrest and banishment. Among its centerpieces is The Blind Musician, the study of a boy born without sight who grows up in a comfortable household and, guided by his gruff soldier uncle, learns to reckon with his suffering and to find his place through music. Other tales blend plain realism with folk feeling and a steady moral seriousness. Korolenko writes with sympathy rather than sentimentality, always alert to dignity in hard lives. Free PDF and EPUB edition available.