The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Summary

Bored and childless, Katerina Ismailov lives with her husband, Zinovy, under the cruel rule of her father-in-law, Boris. When Boris and Zinovy are both called away from their estate on urgent business, Katerina’s attentions soon turn to Sergei, the newly-arrived farmhand ­– and thus begins Nikolai Leskov’s perfectly formed tale of lust, murder, guilt and revenge.

About the author

Nikolay Leskov

Nikolai Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo in Russia. He began his writing career as a journalist living in Kiev, and later settled in St. Petersburg. He published his first piece of fiction in 1862 in The Northern Bee, and continued on to write and publish many short stories and novellas, including The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865), The Sealed Angel (1873), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and Lefty(1882). He died in February 1895.
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