Maxim Gorky

I met him stumbling upon the hurdle fence in the dark, crying and struggling through puddles of mud. The people under the roofs were in a bad humour, and would not give me a night's lodging. A...

The blue southern sky was bedimmed by the dust rising from the haven, and the voices of the people. Greg Chelkash, that old wolf of the pastures, appeared among the dock-hands, and Semenich...

Aristid Kuvalda had a two-storied house at the end of the main street, where the captain passed most of his time sitting on a kind of bench or else in the eating-house of Egor Yavilovitch. The...

A Georgian prince by name Shakro Ptadze haunted me. He borrowed a passport of a hair-dresser of the same age as himself and began eagerly telling him about Christ's life. The prince sighed,...

A wind is scudding over the steppe, and oxen are drawing wagon-loads of threshed grain through rich. A needy native of Tula salutes each Cossack, and a woman sits engaged in embroidering a blue...

The suburban muzhiks knew Jig-Leg and Hopeful very well. They used to tramp along some village road, looking carefully about them, and avoiding any chance encounters. Jig-Leg cut the osiers with...

Gubin was in a tavern, where I first saw him. He reminded me of a homeless dog, and his words caused his lips to bare stumps and gums amid which they lost their way, became disintegrated...

When I was a student at Moscow, I lived alongside a tallish, powerfully-built brunette with black, bushy eyebrows and a large coarse face. She inspired me with horror. One morning, Teresa the...

In a mountain defile near a workman's barraque was being built, and we could hear muffled hammer blows, screeching of saws, and toylike human beings and diminutive cattle. The foreman shaded his...

We quitted Perekop in the vilest spirits, hungry as wolves and at war with all the world, and resolved to go further on. I walked with the soldier, raising a great deal of dust. We went along the...

The wind was charged with moist, salt spray and caused the rocks to rumble angrily and the trees to rustle. A man with a black beard and a brigand's dark eyes was gazing at the Crucifix with a...

Malva was coming, and Vassili kept asking Iakov questions. Iakov felt particularly uneasy when Malva said in a mocking tone, and his face took on a hard expression before Malva. Malva returned with...