The Queen of Spades

One of the most celebrated short stories by a foundational figure in Russian literature, now in a Little Clothbound Classic designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith

A Penguin Hardcover Classic

A countess with a card trick; love letters filled with deception; a desperate man with a pistol.＂The Queen of Spades,＂ one of Pushkin’s most popular and chilling stories, is accompanied here by the thrilling ＂Dubrovsky＂ and unforgettable ＂Tales of Belkin.＂

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799. He was exiled for his liberal views on serfdom and autocracy, but this allowed him the freedom to write some of his greatest works, including the novel in verse Eugene Onegin. He died in 1837 after being fatally wounded in a duel.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, and Pasternak. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, for their translations of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married and live in Paris.