Ivan Alexseevich Bunin (1870-1953) began by writing poetry, but soon turned to prose, the short story being his preferred genre. Sceptical about the various brands of literary modernism at the beginning of the century, he refused to join any of the several democratic and revolutionary groups of writers, and greeted the Bolshevik Revolution with distain. He emigrated to France, never to return to his homeland, which he missed with a nostalgia reflected in stories like Grammatika Iyubvi, Dalekoe, and Temnye allei which are included in this volume as is his best-known story Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko.

In 1933 Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Russian writer to achieve that distinction. His unswerving anti-Soviet stance was posthumously forgiven, and he is now recognised in his homeland, too, as one of the great masters of Russian language.