Twelve Stories by Mikhail Zoshchenko

Version 1.3, annotated by Lesli LaRocco and Slava Paperno

Mikhail Zoshchenko is an icon of Soviet satire, a "must read" for any student of Russian language and culture. These are twelve of his funniest stories from the turbulent 20s. Zoshchenko, in his uniquely Russian style, pokes fun—often malicious fun—at the universal foibles of human nature and a social system in the throes of change.

The language in these stories is colloquial and colorful, and the biting satire introduces the reader to Russian humor and to an historical period when Russian society was most vulnerable to satirizing.

These stories were chosen from various early editions, and were neither edited nor abridged. Individual words as well as idiomatic and colloquial phrases are glossed, with each gloss carefully tailored to the immediate context. A click of the mouse button pops up a window giving the English definition and morphological information for the word or phrase. Your eyes never leave the screen, and you never lose your place or your concentration thumbing through a glossary. Because the stories were chosen for their merit, more fluent readers will enjoy them for their own sakes, and the hypertext medium will allow those readers to look up the occasional word without the distraction of gloss numbers.

The stories can be used for second- or third-year students. Some are suitable even for late in the first year. In addition to being excellent reading assignments, all stories can be summarized easily by the students, or acted out in class.

The Modern Language Journal called the book version of this collection, "a timely choice... a welcome classroom tool..."