The Subtle 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 captivated both ordinary... readers and critics. «She is considered the most entertaining and „funny“ writer. And on a long journey, one must take a volume of her stories...» wrote Mikhail Zoshchenko. Teffi's works, in which good-natured laughter and subtle irony sometimes combine with poignant sadness and compassion for her characters, were highly valued by her contemporaries: Alexander Kuprin and Ivan Bunin, Mark Aldanov and Sasha Chernyshev. Unusually popular in her homeland and later in the émigré community, Teffi returned to Russian readers in the early 1990s. Since then, collections of her stories and memoirs have been published one after another. This edition includes well-known stories by Teffi, written in different years of her life, among which are such small masterpieces as «Lieutenant Kaspar», «Katenka», «Behind the Wall», «Demonic Woman» and many others.