"On the whole, the volume reads like a cohesive book ...and maintains a high standard of scholarship throughout. Investigators of Russian literary demonism in the future will surely want to consult this excellent work." * The Russian Review "...this collection displays a degree of mutual collaborat[...]
A dark classic of Russia's silver age, this blackly funny novel recounts a schoolteacher's descent into sadism, arson and murder. Mad, lascivious, sadistic and ridiculous, the provincial school teacher Peredonov torments his students and has hallucinatory fantasies about acts of savagery and degrada[...]