Alexej Remizov bol ruský modernistický autor, ktorého tvorba sa vyznačovala fantastickým a bizarným pohľadom na svet. Fascinoval ho ruský folklór a stredoveké umenie, ktoré sa snažil oživiť vo svojich dielach, často štylizovaných do podoby stredovekých legiend a príbehov. Jeho próza sa zaoberá temnejšími stránkami ruskej spoločnosti a psychiky, často s nádychom satiry a hororu. Remizovov jedinečný štýl, inšpirovaný ľudovou predstavivosťou a snovými víziami, ho odlišoval od ostatných autorov svojej doby.
Alexei Remizov was one of the greatest writers of the Russian Symbolist
movement. In the thirteen stories collected in this volume, his exceptional
stylistic achievements are on full display. The Little Devil and Other Stories
includes works from across Remizov's career encompassing his thematic
preoccupations and stylistic experimentation.
The first English translation of this remarkable 1910 novel by Alexei Remizov,
one of the most influential members of the Russian Symbolist movement, Sisters
of the Cross is a masterpiece of early modernist fiction. In the tradition of
Gogol's Petersburg Tales and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, it deploys
densely packed psychological prose and fluctuating narrative perspective to
tell the story of a poor clerk who rebels against the suffering and
humiliation afflicting both his own life and the lives of the remarkable women
whom he encounters in the tenement building where he lives in Petersburg.
Remizov is best known as a writer of short stories and fairy tales, but this
early novel, masterfully translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy, is perhaps
his most significant work of sustained artistic prose.