Five tales of social satire from a forgotten sensation of nineteenth-century Russian literature

In 1830s and ’40s Russia, A.  F. Veltman’s eccentric writings were a fixture on the bookshelves of the reading public. In his era, his work influenced writers including Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The five stories collected here, united by themes of social satire, display Veltman’s characteristic pivots between the tragic, comic, and grotesque. 

“Erotida” riffs on the genre of the society tale with linguistic puns and a bizarre plot resolution. In “Roland the Furious,” provincial officials mistake a traveler for a high-ranking government functionary. “Travel Impressions, and, among Other Things, a Pot of Geraniums” plays on the travelogue genre and includes what may be the first description in Russian literature of journey by railroad. “A Traveler from the Provinces; or, A Commotion in the Capital” parodies the Moscow literary salons of Veltman’s day. Finally, “It’s Not a House, but a Plaything!” toys with yet another storytelling convention of the time—the Russian folkloric tradition of “house spirits.”
 

The first English-language translation of an eccentric, unclassifiable classic 
 
An unnamed narrator embarks on a rambling journey across the diverse borderlands of the Russian and Ottoman Empires—all without leaving his divan. Drawing on his own experiences in Bessarabia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29, A. F. Veltman describes our Romantic narrator poring over a map and traversing distant, contested regions—at once imperial backwaters and cosmopolitan crossroads—where Romanians, Ruthenians, Jews, Bulgarians, Germans, and Turks comingle. 

Meandering and motley in form and language, this lost classic of the early nineteenth century deploys metafictional innovations that anticipate postmodernist literature. The novel is speckled with dictionary entries, multiplication tables, philosophical digressions, and love poetry as Veltman swings from Gothic horror to antiquarian commentary to burlesque comedy. Past, present, and fantasy blend together, as Alexander the Great, Ovid, and Augustus join the narrator on his daydreamed journey of self-discovery. 

Hugely popular in its day, The Wanderer is a remarkable tale that depicts the extraordinary places and peoples that met along the fault lines of once-great empires.