Wolves and Other Love Stories of Ivan Bunin

Library Journal

This is an eerie book. In 32 brief stories and sketches, most of them written in emigration in Paris, Nobel Prize-winning author Bunin (1870-1953) obsessively catalogs varieties of love (or lust) in prerevolutionary Russia. The protagonists (some of them women) are often nameless first-person voices, with nature and place benign or threatening characters in their own right and the overall mood one of nostalgia and loss. Bunin's use of multisensory imagery gives his slight narratives an immediacy and heat sometimes lost in the sexual gymnastics of modern fiction. Overall, this is a minor but fascinating selection from Bunin's extensive works. Scott's usually sensitive translation should find a place in the college classroom and on Russian and general literature shelves.-- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.