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Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
A Literary Fiction Novella by Nikolai Leskov
Subgenres:
- Psychological Drama,
- Russian Literature
This book is for you if you're into...
- Russian tales where passion turns dangerous and destructive
- Antiheroines who break rules and pay the price
From Little Stack
This brutal short story, first published in 1865, takes William Shakespeare's Lady MacBeth and transplants her to the Russian heartland. Forced into a marriage of convenience with an older man, Katerina Lvovna finds solace in an innocent flirtation with her steward, Sergei. But soon, he forces his way into her bed, and Katerina decides to risk everything to be with the man she loves (not knowing that he's a cad who's done this to every woman in town.) To reclaim her freedom, she’ll have to become a far more dangerous woman than her husband or Sergei believes her to be.
In this powerful and brutal short story, Leskov demonstrates the enduring truth of the Shakespearean archetype joltingly displaced to the heartland of Russia.
Chastened and stifled by her marriage of convenience to a man twice her age, the young Katerina Lvovna goes yawning about the house, missing the barefoot freedom of her childhood, until she meets the feckless steward Sergei Filipych. Sergei proceeds to seduce Katerina, as he has done half the women in the town, not realizing that her passion, once freed, will attach to him so fiercely that Katerina will do anything to keep hold of him.
Journalist and prose writer Nikolai Leskov is known for his powerful characterizations and the quintessentially Russian atmosphere of his stories.
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