Popular books, bestsellers often become novels, but not collections of short stories, and meanwhile the skill of the writer is much more obvious in the short prose format. Hemingway once stressed the fundamental importance of finding the "right word" that a good writer can fit into what a bad writer can write out on two pages. All the more pleasant is short prose because you can read a whole work: from beginning to end, during a trip or in one weekend. Short prose is not for all authors, we offer a list of the best contemporary short story authors and their best collections translated into Russian.

Would you be so kind as to be quiet?

Raymond Carver

Carver is perhaps the most concise of the authors on this list. Shortlisted for the American National Book prize, he wrote the stories in his "first life" in which he nearly died of alcoholism. His "second life" began in 1977 thanks to the support of the Association of Alcoholics Anonymous.

December tenth

George Saunders

George Saunders is the creator of "laugh bombs", which he carefully hides between the deep thoughts of his philosophical stories, full of imagination and action. He is a master at combining humor and humanity with brilliant writing technique.

fugitive

Alice Munro

The Canadian writer, noted as "a master of modern short fiction," won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her lifetime contribution to literature and was named "Chekhov of our time." The Fugitive is one of her best collections.

Garden Party and Other Stories

Katherine Mansfield

This collection was printed in 1922, a year before the death of Katherine Mansfield at the age of 34. A pioneer of modernism, Mansfield was born and raised in colonial New Zealand, eventually moving to the UK where she became friends with D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The title story of the collection uses as background the family's routine preparations for tea in the garden, but offers deep and penetrating reflections on social status, life and death, illusions and reality.

Pulse

Julian Barnes

Barnes is better known as a novelist, having received the Man Booker prize in 2011 for "A Premonition of the End", as a result, his stories receive less attention than they certainly deserve. If you're looking for a masterclass in short fiction, you can use this book by Barnes as a reference. His original and attentive look at social nuances gives the reader non-standard plots and believable characters.

Selected stories

Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is one of the best observers of human behavior. Sharp humor is a hallmark of the author, however, the main feature of her skill is the ability to move on to piercing, taboo topics: deadly diseases, betrayals and family tragedies.

domestic truth

Mavis Gallant

Not much has been translated into Russian from this author, but the search (or the effort to read in the original) is certainly worth it: Gallant is one of the best writers in the short prose genre. In total, she wrote a dozen collections of short stories. "Home Truth" - smart prose and wonderful dialogues - is a story about the peculiarities of Canadian identity.

steps

Jerzy Kosinski

According to critics, the stories in this collection reflect the dark side of humanity. These are miniature allegories told with exceptional elegance.

Kiss

Roald Dahl

labyrinths

Jorge Luis Borges

This book was written by the author during World War II and includes many of Borges' best works, such as The Library of Babel, a story that inspired many other famous authors like Umberto Eco and Terry Pratchett to create variations on the theme.

Prose is around us. It is in life and in books. Prose is our everyday language.

Artistic prose is a non-rhyming narrative that does not have a size (a special form of organization of sounding speech).

A prose work is a work written without rhyme, which is its main difference from poetry. Prose works are both artistic and non-fiction, sometimes they are intertwined, as, for example, in biographies or memoirs.

How did the prose, or epic, work come about?

Prose entered the world of literature from Ancient Greece. It was there that poetry first appeared, and then prose as a term. The first prose works were myths, traditions, legends, fairy tales. These genres were defined by the Greeks as non-artistic, mundane. These were religious, everyday or historical narratives, which received the definition of "prose".

In the first place was highly artistic poetry, prose was in second place, as a kind of opposition. The situation began to change only in the second half. Prose genres began to develop and expand. Novels, short stories and short stories appeared.

In the 19th century, the prose writer pushed the poet into the background. The novel, short story became the main art forms in literature. Finally, the prose work took its rightful place.

Prose is classified by size: small and large. Consider the main artistic genres.

A work in prose of a large volume: types

A novel is a prose work that is distinguished by the length of the narrative and a complex plot that is fully developed in the work, and the novel may also have side storylines, in addition to the main one.

The novelists were Honoré de Balzac, Daniel Defoe, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Erich Maria Remarque and many others.

Examples of prose works by Russian novelists can make up a separate book-list. These are works that have become classics. For example, such as "Crime and Punishment" and "Idiot" by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, "The Gift" and "Lolita" by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, "A Hero of Our Time" Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov and so on.

An epic is larger in volume than a novel, and describes major historical events or responds to popular issues, more often both.

The most significant and famous epics in Russian literature are "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, " Quiet Don» Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov and «Peter the First» by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Prose work of a small volume: types

A novella is a short work, comparable to a short story, but rich in events. The history of the short story originates in oral folklore, in parables and legends.

The novelists were Edgar Allan Poe, Herbert Wells; Guy de Maupassant and Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin also wrote short stories.

A story is a short prose work, characterized by a small number of actors, one storyline and detailed description details.

Bunin and Paustovsky are rich in stories.

An essay is a prose work that is easily confused with a story. But still there are significant differences: a description of only real events, the absence of fiction, a combination of fiction and non-fiction literature, as a rule, touching on social problems and the presence of more descriptiveness than in a story.

Essays are portrait and historical, problematic and travel. They can also mix with each other. For example, a historical essay may also contain a portrait or problematic one.

Essays are some impressions or reasoning of the author in connection with a particular topic. It has free composition. This type of prose combines the functions of a literary essay and a journalistic article. It may also have something in common with a philosophical treatise.

Medium prose genre - short story

The story is on the border between the short story and the novel. In terms of volume, it cannot be attributed to either small or large prose works.

In Western literature, the story is called a "short novel". Unlike the novel, the story always has one storyline, but it also develops fully and fully, so it cannot be attributed to the genre of the story.

There are many examples of short stories in Russian literature. Here are just a few: “Poor Liza” by Karamzin, “The Steppe” by Chekhov, “Netochka Nezvanova” by Dostoevsky, “Uyezdnoye” by Zamyatin, “The Life of Arsenyev” by Bunin, “ Stationmaster» Pushkin.

In foreign literature, one can name, for example, “Rene” by Chateaubriand, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Conan Doyle, “The Tale of Mr. Sommer” by Suskind.

We all studied prose at school in literature lessons, and who can now answer the question of what prose is? Perhaps you remember what prose is called oral or written speech, but you probably forgot that works in prose are not divided into commensurate segments (in other words, poetry). Unlike poetry, the rhythm of prose works is the ratio of syntactic constructions (sentences, periods).

Prose originated in the days of ancient literature. From the 19th century, prose began to lead in literature.

Let us explain what is related to prose. Prose is called ordinary speech, simple, not measured, without dimensions. However, there is a measured prose, similar in its sound to the old Russian songs.

Prose also has forms. So, journalistic, business, scientific, religious-preaching, memoir-confessional forms initially developed.

Stories, novels and novels belong to artistic prose and differ from lyrics in their emotional restraint, intellectuality, and philosophical principles.

From the definition at the beginning of the article, it is easy to understand that prose is the opposite of poetry. But then what is a poem in prose? This text is very coherent, but without rhyme, almost always romantic content. Many poems in prose were written by I.S. Turgenev.

Prose genres

Traditionally, literary genres related to prose include:

• Novel. A novel is a narrative work, large in volume and with a complex, developed plot.
• Tale. This is a kind of epic poetry, similar to a novel, which tells about some episode from life. In the story, to a lesser extent than in the novel, it tells about the life and disposition of the characters, it is shorter and more restrained.
• Novella. A novella is a small literary narrative genre. In terms of volume, it is comparable to a story, but a distinctive feature is the presence of genesis, history and structure.
• epic. An epic work, monumental in form, affecting the nation's issues.
• Story. Is an small form fiction. The volume of the text is small, since the story does not cover a large period of time and describes any specific event in a specific time period.
• Essay. This is a prose essay on any topic. The volume is small, the composition is not strictly marked. In the essay, the author expresses his individual impression and opinion on a particular issue.
• A biography is a well-known form of presenting the history of a person's life and activities.