Subtly Worded and Other Stories (Pushkin Collection) - Tapa blanda

[Teffi's work is] amazingly modern, as easy to devour, as, well, a box of chocolates -- Rachel Cooke Observer Made me fall in love... [Teffi] can write in more registers than you might think, and is capable of being heartbreaking as well as very funny. I wish she were still alive, and I could have met her. But then I realised she would have seen right through me. I can't recommend her strongly enough -- Nicholas Lezard Guardian Her range is as broad as her prose is buoyant New Statesman Teffi packs more humour and poignancy into six short pages than many novels manage in 600 The Kompass Teffi has been unjustly neglected. She deserves to be known outside of Russia and thankfully we have wonderful translators and publishers who can bring her work to us Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings A dream come true. As is always the case with Pushkin Press, the book itself is beautifully produced piece of work, and once again they have had the courage to take a chance with an unjustly neglected author... wonderfully strange, fiercely intelligent and side-splittingly funny Upcoming4Me A gifted satirist and social observer... possessed of a lightness of touch... her precise voice is her own and this mercurial volume is a singular prism to not so much a lost world as to a changing culture that learned to adapt without ever forgetting the past -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times Combines Jane Austen's nose for pretension and the gleeful, catty wit of a Wilde or a Waugh... Ultimately, though, it's what you find beneath the sarcasm and the critique that makes these stories so compelling... No matter how ridiculous her characters, Teffi always reserves a little bit of tenderness for them. Perhaps, she seems to be saying, with our thwarted hopes and petty logic, we are closer to the fools than we know -- Peter Beech Russia Behind the Headlines Jackson and her co-translators deserve high praise for the delicate modulations to preserve Teffi's tone throughout... Teffi's brilliance at capturing the dark comedy of her milieu should no longer prevent her from being recognized as an important European writer TLS Like Nabokov, Platonov, and many other great Russian prose writers, Teffi was a poet who turned to prose but continued to write with a poet's sensitivity to tone and rhythm. Like Chekhov, she fuses wit, tragedy, and a remarkable capacity for observation; there are few human weaknesses she did not relate to with compassion and understanding -- Robert Chandler New Yorker A volume of stories that could not be more aptly titled. Teffi was not only a great wit and an impeccable stylist, but one of the twentieth century's most perceptive and clear-headed observers. Subtly Worded is flawless - a true revelation -- Boris Dralyuk Pen Atlas Witty, acerbic, playful and profound, Teffi's tales are here again, and if there is any justice, they are here to stay Minneapolis Star Tribune The characters pop off the page with a flick of the pen. Teffi... turned out finely engraved sentences that achieved their effects economically -- William Grimes New York Times The stories gathered in this little volume radiate beauty and burst with the winking humor for which Teffi was always known... wonder-filled Blogcritics Virtually unknown in English until this series of translations by Pushkin Press -- Peter Pomerantsev London Review of Books

A selection of the finest stories by this female Chekhov Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny - a wry, scathing observer of society - she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of emigre society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence. Teffi was a phenomenally popular writer in pre-revolutionary Russia - a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. She was born in 1872 into a prominent St Petersburg family and emigrated from Bolshevik Russia in 1919. She eventually settled in Paris, where she became an important figure in the emigre literary scene, and where she lived until her death in 1952. A master of the short form, in her lifetime Teffi published countless stories, plays and feuilletons. After her death, she was gradually forgotten, but the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about her rediscovery by Russian readers. Now, nearly a century after her emigration, she once again enjoys critical acclaim and a wide readership in her motherland. 'Made me fall in love... [Teffi] can write in more registers than you might think, and is capable of being heartbreaking as well as very funny. I wish she were still alive, and I could have met her. But then I realised she would have seen right through me. I can't recommend her strongly enough' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian, Book of the Week