Book excerpt: "The Queen of Spades" is one of the most famous tales in Russian literature, and inspired the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky; in "The Stationmaster", from The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, Pushkin reworks the parable of the Prodigal Son; "Tsar Nikita and his Forty Daughters" is one of Pushkin’s bawdier early poems; and the narrative poem "The Bronze Horseman", inspired by a St Petersburg statue of Peter the Great, is one of Pushkin’s best-known and most influential works. The volume also includes a selection of Pushkin’s best lyric poetry. Contents: • Short Stories: The Queen of Spades; The Stationmaster • Drama: Extracts from Boris Godunov and Mozart and Salieri • The Bronze Horseman (narrative poem), Tsar Nikita and His Forty Daughters (folk poem) and 14 lyric poems • Novel in Verse: Extract from Yevgeny Onegin (novel in verse)