Petersburg, Paperback

Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg is considered one of the four greatest prose masterpieces of the 20th century. In this new edition of the best-selling translation, the reader will have access to the translators' detailed commentary, which provides the necessary historical and literary context for understanding the novel, as well as a foreword by Olga Matich, acclaimed scholar of Russian literature.

Set in 1905 in St. Petersburg, a city in the throes of sociopolitical conflict, the novel follows university student Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov, who has gotten entangled with a revolutionary terrorist organization with plans to assassinate a government official-Nikolai's own father, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov. With a sprawling cast of characters, set against a nightmarish city, it is all at once a historical, political, philosophical, and darkly comedic novel.

About the Author:

Andrei Bely (1880-1934), born Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, was a Russian novelist, poet, and literary critic. His other works include The Silver Dove and Kotik Letaev.

Robert A. Maguire (1930-2005) was the Boris Bakhmeteff Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Columbia University. He was author of Exploring Gogol and Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920's.

John E. Malmstad is Samuel Hazzard Cross Research Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He is author of Andrey Bely: Spirit of Symbolism and Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art.

Olga Matich is Professor Emerita of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She is editor of Petersburg/Petersburg: Novel and City 1900-1921 and author of Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Si cle.