内容简介：
"I never imagined such a memoir could be possible, especially about the Russian Civil War. Teffi wears her wisdom lightly, observing farce and foible amid the looming tragedy, in this enthralling book" —Antony Beevor
"A vividly idiosyncratic personal account of the disintegration - moral, political, strategic - of Tsarist Russia after the Revolution, as alive to the farcical and the ridiculous as it is to the tragic; a bit like what Chekhov might have written if he had lived to experience it." —Michael Frayn
Praise for Subtly Worded (Pushkin)
“The characters pop off the page with a flick of the pen. Teffi, used to writing for newspapers, turned out finely engraved sentences that achieved their effects economically.”—William Grimes, The New York Times
“[Teffi] can write in more registers than you might think, and is capable of being heartbreaking as well as very funny. I wish she were still alive, and I could have met her. But then I realised she would have seen right through me. I can’t recommend her strongly enough.”—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
“These short stories of Russian peasants, artists and lovers show few signs of their age and much that is timeless.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Teffi’s wit, sometimes Saki-esque, is always evident, but her characters—bullied servants, alcoholics, neglected children, aging peasants—teeter on the edge of an abyss.”—Charlotte Moore, The Spectator
“Witty, acerbic, playful and profound.”—Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune
作者简介：
Teffi (1872–1952) was the pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, born in St. Petersburg into a distinguished family that treasured literature. She and her three sisters all became writers. Teffi wrote in a variety of styles and genres: political feuilletons published in a Bolshevik newspaper during her brief period of radical fervor after the 1905 Revolution; Symbolist poems that she declaimed or sang in Petersburg literary salons; popular one-act plays, mostly humorous or satirical—one was entitled The Woman Question; and a novel titled simply Adventure Novel. Her finest works are her short stories and Memories, a witty, tragic, and deeply perceptive account of her last journey across Russia and what is now Ukraine, before going by boat to Istanbul in the summer of 1919. Teffi was widely read; her admirers included not only such writers as Bunin, Bulgakov, and Zoshchenko, but also both Lenin and the last tsar. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, candies and perfumes were named after her; after the Revolution, her stories were published and her plays performed throughout the Russian diaspora. She died in Paris.
Robert Chandler’s translations from Russian include Alexander Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter (an NYRB classic); Nikolay Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook, Everything Flows, Life and Fate, and The Road (all NYRB classics); and Hamid Ismailov’s Central Asian novel, The Railway. His co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won prizes both in the UK and in the US. He is the editor and main translator of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov. Together with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski he has co-edited The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. He has also translated selections of Sappho and Apollinaire. As well as running regular translation workshops in London and teaching the annual Translate in the City literary translation course, he works as a mentor for the British Centre for Literary Translation.
Elizabeth Chandler is a co-translator, with Robert Chandler, of Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter and of several titles by Andrey Platonov and Vasily Grossman.
Anne Marie Jackson has lived for extended periods in Russia and Moldova. She is a co-translator, with Robert Chandler and Rose France, of Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi (available as an NYRB classic). Her previous translations include works by Alexei Nikitin, Maxim Osipov, and Olga Slavnikova.
Irina Steinberg was born in Moscow in 1983. She emigrated to England with her family at the age of eight and now lives primarily in London. She has a BA in English language and literature from University College London, as well as postgraduate qualifications in law. She started pursuing her interest in translation professionally in her late twenties and was a co-translator of Teffi’s Subtly Worded and Other Stories (2014).
Edythe Haber is Professor Emerita of Russian at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Center Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Mikhail Bulgakov: The Early Years (1998) and of many articles on Russian literature, particularly on Bulgakov, Teffi, and Vladimir Nabokov. She is presently completing a critical biography of Teffi.
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