Centering on the picaresque realism of Nikolai Gogol's (1809-1852) mid-19th-century visions of the extraordinary in everyday life, this collection mines the ambiance and mind of pre-Revolutionary Russia. These seven stories take us from the Miracle Mile of St. Petersburg's Nevsky Prospekt, and a summer night in a Ukrainian village, to the fantastical psychological geographies of fathers, sons, and madmen. Augmenting Gogol's visions are two disturbing tales by the foremost storyteller of Russia's "Silver Age" Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919), and a coda from one of Anton Chekhov's (1860-1904) stable of memorable characters.