Synopses & Reviews
The Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main hero, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting. He is at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard. The plot moves from Peredonov's petty quest for a promotion to arson and murder via one of the most incredible and uproarious scandal scenes in world literature, the masquerade ball, which the boy Sasha attends as a beautiful geisha. Even in its censored form, it is one of the most provocative and sexually open of Russian books. Sologub removed many passages which would have been unacceptable at the time of publication. In this edition these censored sections are appended, and all are keyed so that the reader can place them in the novel as it was written.
Synopsis
A blackly comic Russian classic about a schoolteachers descent into sadism, arson, and murder
Mad, lascivious, sadistic, and ridiculous, the provincial schoolteacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucinatory fantasies about acts of savagery and degradation, yet to everyone else he is an upstanding member of society. This grotesque mirror of a spiritually bankrupt society is arguably the finest Russian novel to have come out of the Symbolist movement.
Synopsis
The electricity of the relationship between the androgynous, pubescent Sasha and the lovely Lyudmilla, with her exotic perfumes, caresses and lubricious fantasies, seldom fails to hold the reader's attention.
About the Author
FYODOR SOLOGUB was born in St Petersburg in 1863. He wrote several novels, including
Bad Dreams (1896) and
The Little Demon (1907), which brought him immediate fame. He also published many books of poems and short stories, and two plays.
RONALD WILKS (translator) has translated many works from Russian for Penguin Classics, including books by Gorky, Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov.
PAMELA DAVIDSON (introducer) is a professor of Russian Literature at the University College of London.