The Queen of Spades

A young man plots to unearth a secret from an elderly countess - a secret he believes will win him a fortune. 'The Queen of Spades' is Pushkin's prose masterpiece, a gripping tale of avarice, obsession, madness and cards. This wonderful collection also includes the keenly and sympathetically observed story 'The Stationmaster'; the narrative poem 'The Bronze Horseman'; a selection of Pushkin's lyric poems; the ribald saga of 'Tsar Nikita and his Forty Daughters'; and excerpts from Yevgeny Onegin and Mozart and Salieri. It serves as an ideal introduction to the incomparable Pushkin, the headspring of all Russian literature.