sad little stories ( )

Unlike in his autobiographical trilogy, Gorky's writing in these stories is florid and 'saturated', and the translations (in the Heron edition anyway) seem so archaic they must have been for its original English publication. But the stories are truly remarkable documents of life among the lower segments of society in Russia at that time. Most remarkable of all is the way the author finds and expresses the humanity hidden in broken, defeated individuals regarded as the dregs of society. Forced through circumstances and/or desperate choices to tramp a land in which drink, religion, violence and fatalism are all-pervasive, they are in search of something better than the misery they have left behind them. In stories which tell of his encounters with them, Gorky creates unforgettable pictures of a Russia which, as we now know, was on a path to social breakdown. ( )