The Queen of Spades, one of his most popular and chilling short stories, tells of an inveterate card player who develops a dangerous obsession with the secret of an old lady's luck, which he believes will bring him the wealth he craves. The Negro of Peter the Great, a story based on the life Pushkin's own great-grandfather, is a vivid depiction — and criticism — of both French and Russian society, while Dubrovsky is the Byronic tale of a dispossessed young officer. The Captain's Daughter tells of a young man sent to military service — based on the actual events of the rebellion against Catherine II, it demonstrates Pushkin's unparalleled skill at blending fiction and history. Together these four stories display the versatility and innovation that earned Pushkin his reputation as a master of prose and established him as the towering figure in Russian literature.

Al final de su carrera, Pushkin realizó la transición entre poesía y prosa, y demostró tanta genialidad en este género como en el que se dio a conocer. Dicha prosa, de forma especial Historias de Belkin, contiene muchas de las virtudes de su poesía: claridad, coherencia e ingenio. Estos cuentos, destinados a familiarizar a la audiencia lectora de San Petersburgo con las clases bajas, contribuyeron a la identificación de Pushkin como escritor nacional de Rusia, un hombre con un abanico de simpatías tan extenso como tipos de gente existían en la sociedad que habitaba. Ingeniosos, divertidos y llenos de sensibilidad, son considerados una pieza imprescindible para entender la gran literatura rusa que surgiría tras Pushkin. Como apunta el ameno prólogo que acompaña a esta nueva colección, la publicación del ciclo marcó la transición entre un estilo literario más afrancesado y la incorporación e incluso creación de un lenguaje literario propiamente ruso. En los relatos abundan los duelos, las identidades confusas, los amores malogrados, los juegos de azar? Profundamente adelantados a su tiempo, al carecer de modelos preexistentes, Pushkin se sirve de la literatura popular de la época para realizar una parodia tanto de los géneros en boga como de su propia sociedad. El resultado es inteligente en extremo, divertido y profundamente original. Las historias de Belkin son un clásico imprescindible de la literatura eslava, aunque la inmensa reputación de Pushkin como poeta los haya eclipsado en cierta medida. Las Historias de Belkin se encuentran entre los ciclos de relatos rusos más divertidos e ingeniosos, y anuncian muchos de los caminos hacia los que evolucionaría la literatura del siglo veinte.

Alexander Pushkin was Russia's first true literary genius. Best known for his poetry, he also wrote sparkling prose that revealed his national culture with elegance and understated humour. Here, his gift for portraying the Russian people is fully revealed. The Tales of Belkin, his first prose masterpiece, presents a series of interlinked stories narrated by a good-hearted Russian squire — among them The Shot, in which a duel is revisited after many years, and the grotesque The Undertaker. Elsewhere, works such as the novel-fragment Roslavlev and the Egyptian Nights, the tale of an Italian balladeer seeking an audience in St. Petersberg, demonstrate the wide range of Pushkin's fiction. A Journey to Arzrum, the final piece in this collection, offers an autobiographical account of Pushkin's own experiences in the 1829 war between Russia and Turkey, and remains one of the greatest of all pieces of journalistic adventure writing.

Beyond his perfect expression of Russian mood, Pushkin's universality of vision has made him a permanent place in the history of world literature. Gillon Aitken's distinguished translation is the only volume that contains all his prose fiction, including some tales which remained unfinished when Pushkin was tragically killed in a duel at the age of thirty-seven.