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description: Newly translated unfinished works about power class conflict and artistic inspiration by Russia's greatest poet.Alexander Pushkin Russias foundational writer was constantly experimenting with new genres and this fresh selection ushers readers into his creative laboratory. Politics and history weighed heavily on Pushkins imagination and in Peter the Greats African he depicts the Tsar through the eyes of one of his closest confidantes Ibrahim a former slave modeled on Pushkins maternal great-grandfather. At once outsider and insider Ibrahim offers a sympathetic yet questioning view of Peters attempt to integrate his vast archaic empire into Europe. In the witty History of the Village of Goriukhino Pushkin employs parody and self-parody to explore problems of writing history while Dubrovsky is both a gripping adventure story and a vivid picture of provincial Russia in the late eighteenth century with its class conflicts ready to boil over in violence. The Egyptian Nights an effervescent mixture of prose and poetry reflects on the nature of artistic inspiration and the problem of the poets place in a rapidly changing and ever more commercialized society.
language: None
title: The Negro of Peter the Great
publisher: None