The Queen of Spades (1834) is Pushkin’s masterpiece of prose fiction — a tightly wound tale of a young officer obsessed with learning the secret of winning at cards from an ancient countess, with supernatural and fatal consequences. Compact, ironic, and psychologically acute, it established the standard for Russian short fiction and directly inspired Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky.
The accompanying stories demonstrate Pushkin’s elegant, classical prose style. Download the free EPUB and discover why he remains the central figure in Russian literary culture.