The Tales of Belkin

In the autumn of 1830, due to a cholera outbreak, Pushkin was forced to remain on his Boldino estate, effectively in isolation. In the course of a month and a half, he created five novellas—those very “little fairy tales” and “tales,” as he called them. To bypass strict censorship and disarm picky critics, Pushkin attributed these texts to a fictional author—Ivan Petrovich Belkin, a writer known to no one, who was also already dead. Thanks to this, the novellas were easily granted permission for publication. But how truly simple-minded and harmless they are is for the reader to decide.