Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

"Certainly what impresses in Leskov is his all-seeing but unjudging eye. . . . Leskov is emphatically unlike either Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, and bears only passing comparison with Turgenev. Rather, he emerges as a literary missing link, a writer who brings the metafictional playfulness of Sterne into the Russian tradition, melding this sophistication with his embrace of the folk tale and vernacular of the common people. Then, vitally, there is his legacy to Chekhov: a moral benevolence and humor-filled acceptance of the full range of humanity." --Claire Messud, The New York Times

"Russia's best-kept secret." --Donald Rayfield, Literary Review

"We want to be shown a character's spiritual development; we want to be given truths to live by. But what Leskov gives us is something else: story matters more than character, and all we get by way of metaphysical insight is a sense that life's horrors and beauties are so intermingled as to be beyond all understanding."--Robert Chandler, The Spectator