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This book includes stories in translation by four nineteenth-century Russian authors � Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, and Tolstoy � along with Saunders� commentary. I found his interpretations interesting, despite vehemently disagreeing with some of them (which disagreement Saunders good-naturedly encourages). His critical style is far removed from the academic (despite teaching the course for 20 years, he has not bothered to learn Russian!), which is to say, he is not over-serious or intimidating. Instead, he speaks in a generally friendly, inviting, funny and slightly immature voice.

The full list of stories:
Chekhov In the Cart
Turgenev The Singers
Chekhov The Darling
Tolstoy Master and Man
Gogol The Nose
Chekhov Gooseberries
Tolstoy Alyosha the Pot

Saunders� dissections of the text are geared towards creative writing students, and I found his guidance particularly useful on the topics of pattern (immediately applying it to my own writing) and causality (which I’ve yet to fully master � my instinct is towards the epiphanic, but that’s something only writers of Chekhov’s caliber can pull off).

“there are two things that separate writers who go on to publish from those who don’t. First, a willingness to revise. Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality. Making causality doesn’t seem sexy or particularly literary. It’s a workmanlike thing, to make A cause B [...] But it’s the hardest thing to learn. It doesn’t come naturally, not to most of us. But that’s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality. For most of us, the problem is not in making things happen (“A dog barked�, “The house exploded�, “Darren kicked the tire of his car� are all easy enough to type) but in making one thing seem to cause the next. This is important, because causation is what creates the appearance of meaning.�