One of the great achievements of twentieth-century Russian émigré literature, Dark Avenues - the culmination of a life's work of unrelenting challenge to Soviet dogma - 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 rightly renowned.