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Judith Armstrong reviews The Mysterious Tales of Ivan Turgenev edited and translated by Robert Dessaix
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: USSR tales
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 This volume of stories adds to the spate of books by or about Turgenev that have appeared recently yet it cannot be said to be redundant, as it provides an English version of five novellas not readily available in a collected form. Since the translator’s argument rests on the importance of the frequently neglected later part of Turgenev’s oeuvre (i.e. the shorter works appearing after the major novels) to a true understanding of Turgenev’s philosophical and spiritual history, then obviously the English-speaking world must have access to it, and they should be pleased to make the acquaintance of this accurate and easy translation.

Book 1 Title: The Mysterious Tales of Ivan Turgenev
Book Author: Robert Dessaix
Book 1 Biblio: Australian National University Press, 192 pp, $7.50 pb
Book 1 Author Type: Editor
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The introduction is also valuable, in that it defines the genre of the ‘mysterious tale’ in the terms of the supernatural, the fantastic, the mysterious, and the mystical, while placing the production of the stories in the immediate context of Turgenev’s increasing preoccupation with the ageing process, with isolation, depression, and death; and in the much broader context also of the general nineteenth-century loss of faith.

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