A Piece of Life

In the book "A Piece of Life" by Nadezhda Teffi 1872–1952, there are stories about Russian Paris. The mocking diminutive in the title hides internal tragedy: sharp irony in the works of the "queen of Russian humor" often combined with... tenderness and pity. The heroes of the book are emigrants, "varied and disparate creatures, completely foreign to each other, perhaps, inherently hostile by nature", who "banded together and call themselves by the common name we". In addition to works from lifetime collections, the book includes little-known stories from emigration periodicals, Teffi's memoirs about her contemporaries, and reminiscences about the writer herself. The compilers of the book, the authors of the preface and detailed commentary, are specialists in Teffi's works and the history of 20th-century Russian literature, Dmitry Nikolaev and Elena Trubivova.