Aleksei Remizov était un écrivain moderniste russe dont l'imagination s'est tournée vers le fantastique et le bizarre, s'inspirant fortement du folklore russe et de l'art médiéval. Il chercha à faire revivre d'anciennes formes artistiques à travers sa prose unique, stylisant souvent ses œuvres dans le style des contes et légendes médiévaux. Son écriture explora fréquemment les aspects les plus sombres de la société russe et de la psyché humaine, incorporant des éléments de satire et d'horreur gothique. La voix distinctive de Remizov, imprégnée du parfum de l'imagination populaire et de visions oniriques, le distingua comme une figure littéraire véritablement originale.
Alexei Remizov was one of the greatest writers of the Russian Symbolist movement. In the thirteen stories collected in this volume, his exceptional stylistic achievements are on full display. The Little Devil and Other Stories includes works from across Remizov's career encompassing his thematic preoccupations and stylistic experimentation.
The first English translation of this remarkable 1910 novel by Alexei Remizov, one of the most influential members of the Russian Symbolist movement, Sisters of the Cross is a masterpiece of early modernist fiction. In the tradition of Gogol's Petersburg Tales and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, it deploys densely packed psychological prose and fluctuating narrative perspective to tell the story of a poor clerk who rebels against the suffering and humiliation afflicting both his own life and the lives of the remarkable women whom he encounters in the tenement building where he lives in Petersburg. Remizov is best known as a writer of short stories and fairy tales, but this early novel, masterfully translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy, is perhaps his most significant work of sustained artistic prose.