One of the great achievements of twentieth-century Russian emigre literature, Dark Avenues - translated here for the first time into English in its entirety - took Bunin's poetic mastery of language to new heights.Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of the Russian cultural and historical crises of the preceding decades, this collection of short fiction centres around dark, erotic liaisons. Love - in its many varied forms - is the unifying motif in a rich range of narratives, characterized by the evocative, elegiac, elegant prose for which Bunin is renowned.

Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His last book of fiction Dark Avenues is arguably the most widely read 20th-century collection of short stories in Russia.