Rasputin and Other Ironies

Ranging from portraits of Rasputin and Lenin to observations on the Russian Revolution, and from profiles of cultural figures to moving domestic scenes, this short collection includes writings by the inimitable Teffi never before published in English. Everything is here - politics, society, art and literature, love and family life - and all is told in Teffi's multifaceted style: amusing, sincerely moving, ironic and always honest, pervaded by an intensely felt understanding of humanity's simultaneous tragedy and absurdity.

About the Author :
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. Subtly Worded, published by Pushkin Press in 2014, is the first ever English collection of her writings.

Review :
One of the great twentieth-century writers. At their best her short stories are to my mind the equal of Chekhov's. I doubt if anyone has written with such luminous clarity of what it means to live in a time of chaos [Teffi's work is] amazingly modern, as easy to devour as, well, a box of chocolates Her range is as broad as her prose is buoyant A gifted satirist and social observer 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... I can't recommend her strongly enough [Teffi's] sense of the big things of life somehow disguised in the small... her recollections of [Lenin]... are riveting [and] penetrating Teffi's brilliance at capturing the dark comedy of her milieu should no longer prevent her from being recognized as an important European writer Modern Ukraine could do with some reporters as wise and humane as Teffi By bringing together Teffi's Memories... and her other autobiographical pieces and reminiscences, collected in Rasputin, the editors present a different Teffi - a chronicler of the tragedy of the Russian revolution A master of the short form... the rediscovery of Teffi has to rank high in the achievements of Pushkin Press, alongside their championing of Stefan Zweig and Gaito Gazdanov 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 A joy to read Teffi was not only a great wit and an impeccable stylist, but one of the twentieth century's most perceptive and clear-headed observers [Conveys] Teffi's characteristic mixture of precision, comic timing and evasiveness Virtually unknown in English until this series of translations by Pushkin Press