Robbery. Choice Grain. Pearl Necklace. Chertogon

“Nikolai Leskov,” critics wrote, “is regarded by Russian people as the most Russian of Russian writers, and the one who knew the Russian people more deeply and broadly than anyone else, just as they are.” Readers, meanwhile, were and still are captivated by the writer’s skaz-style artistic manner. Leskov himself said of it: “My priests speak like priests, nihilists like nihilists, peasants like peasants, upstarts from among them and buffoons with affectation, and so on… That popular, vulgar, and ornate language in which many pages of my works are written was not invented by me, but overheard from the peasant, the semi-intellectual, the ranter, the holy fool, and the pious zealot… For I gathered it over many years, word by word, proverb by proverb, and separate expressions caught on the fly, in crowds, on barges, at recruiting offices, and in monasteries...”