Fine Psychology. Humorous Stories

Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, the «queen of laughter», known to readers by the name Teffi, is a bright figure in Russian literature of the first half of the 20th century, the author of brilliant humorous stories that immediately won the hearts of both simple readers and critics. «She is considered the most entertaining and „funny“ writer. And on a long journey, one must definitely take a volume of her stories…» wrote Mikhail Zoshchenko. Teffi's works, in which harmless laughter and subtle irony sometimes combine with poignant sadness and pity for her characters, were highly valued by her contemporaries: Alexander Kuprin and Ivan Bunin, Mark Aldanov and Sasha Chyorny. Unusually popular in her homeland, and later in the émigré community, Teffi returned to Russian readers in the early 1990s. Since then, her collections of stories and memoirs have been published one after another. This edition presents Teffi's stories written at different times in her life, including such small masterpieces as «Lieutenant Kaspar», «Katya», «Behind the Wall», and others; the book also includes Teffi's «Memoirs» about her travels through the vastness of «turmoil» post-revolutionary Russia, one of the author's most humorous and tragic works.