Customer Reviews

Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas (European Classics)

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Some months ago, I praised Graham Hettlinger's superb translations of Bunin (The Elagin Affair and Other Stories). This new collection, translated by Robert Bowie, is equally astonishing. And a much broader collection of the Nobel laureate's work to boot. As if that were not enough, there are nearly 200 pages at the end of the volume with copious notes on the stories, a biographical afterword by Bowie, and a fun chapter, "On Translating Bunin." (Reviewed in Russian Life)

I had never heard of Bunin before I stumbled across this book, but Bunin is a major find - kind of a bridge between Chekhov and Nabokov (whom he obviously influenced), but with a sensibility all his own. The Consecration of Love is one of the best evocations of first love's irrational, insatiable, jealous nature I've ever come across. It's written in the kind of ornate, painterly language that will drive some crazy, but will make other fellow writers jealous. There are a number of gems here, including Drydale and The Gentleman from San Francisco. But it is in The Consecration of Love that Bunin and his translator reach their artistic peak. Robert Bowie's translations are impeccable: as careful and gorgeous as Dmitri Nabokov's of his father Vladimir's work. That is, they are some of the finest things ever written in the English language.