This book contains Dostoyevsky's "White Nights", which is a masterpiece. Likewise I must say I enjoyed Andreyev's "Lazarus": I can't really say why I liked those short-stories so much, but they were a long stretch away from being classical tales.

Through these stories, I feel I've got a firm grasp of 19th-century Russian writing. It's interesting to see how it differs so much and yet so universally little from a lot of western English-speaking literature (even though this is a collection translated to English).

All in all: brilliant and a long stretch from this somewhat stressed-out day and age. A story like Gogol's "The Overcoat" is typical.