> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9781590177242
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $34.99

The Captain's Daughter



An NYRB Classics Original

Alexander Pushkin’s short novel is set during the reign of Catherine the Great, when the Cossacks rose up in rebellion against the Russian empress. Presented as the memoir of Pyotr Grinyov, a nobleman, The Captain’s Daughter tells how, as a feckless youth and fledgling officer, Grinyov was sent from St. Petersburg to serve in faraway southern Russia. Traveling to take up this new post, Grinyov loses his shirt gambling and then loses his way in a terrible snowstorm, only to be guided to safety by a mysterious peasant. With impulsive gratitude Grinyov hands over his fur coat to his savior, never mind the cold.

Soon after he arrives at Fort Belogorsk, Grinyov falls in love with Masha, the beautiful young daughter of his captain. Then Pugachev, leader of the Cossack rebellion, surrounds the fort. Resistance, he has made it clear, will be met with death.

At once a fairy tale and a thrilling historical novel, this singularly Russian work of the imagination is also a timeless, universal, and very winning story of how love and duty can summon pluck and luck to confront calamity.

A classic Russian historical military novel set during the Pugachev Rebellion which contrasts the human internal world with the inevitable movements of history

“Time has done nothing to dull the excitement of the story, which, for all its romantic coincidences, is something more than a mere tale of adventure” —The New York Times

Alexander Pushkin’s short novel is set during the reign of Catherine the Great, when the Cossacks rose up in rebellion against the Russian empress. Presented as the memoir of Pyotr Grinyov, a nobleman, The Captain’s Daughter tells how, as a feckless youth and fledgling officer, Grinyov was sent from St. Petersburg to serve in faraway southern Russia. Traveling to take up this new post, Grinyov loses his shirt gambling and then loses his way in a terrible snowstorm, only to be guided to safety by a mysterious peasant. With impulsive gratitude Grinyov hands over his fur coat to his savior, never mind the cold.

Soon after he arrives at Fort Belogorsk, Grinyov falls in love with Masha, the beautiful young daughter of his captain. Then Pugachev, leader of the Cossack rebellion, surrounds the fort. Resistance, he has made it clear, will be met with death.

At once a fairy tale and a thrilling historical novel, this singularly Russian work of the imagination is also a timeless, universal, and very winning story of how love and duty can summon pluck and luck to confront calamity.

  • Published: 15 September 2014
  • ISBN: 9781590177242
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $34.99

Also by Alexander Pushkin

See all

Praise for The Captain's Daughter

"Time has done nothing to dull the excitement of the story, which, for all its romantic coincidences, is something more than a mere tale of adventure because its characters are something more than cardboard." --The New York Times

"One brilliant feature of The Captain's Daughter is that you don't know what sort of narrative is unfolding.... It is a baffled reflection, from the position of political enlightenment, on the extraordinary hold exercised by violence and fanaticism upon the human race." --A. N. Wilson, The Daily Telegraph

"Robert and Elizabeth Chandler's translation reads wonderfully...and captures the plot's wildness, cruelty, and touching romance." --Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator

"The Captain's Daughter is one of the stories in which Pushkin created Russian prose.... It is true poet's prose, absolutely clear, objective, unpretentious and penetrating." --Robert Conquest, The Spectator