Night Owls

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'I decided that my trip had evidently been in vain, since nothing of interest could possibly occur on this visit. I was mistaken.'Condemned to sleeplessness by the chatter permeating his guesthouse room, a forlorn traveller turns his ear to the riotous tale spun by the garrulous, meddlesome, inane and utterly unprincipled M rya Mart novna next door. Her exuberant deformations of morality and language scandalized Tsarist society, and she remains one of Russian literature s most uproarious anti-heroes.