Aleksei Remizov was een Russische modernist die zich liet leiden door een fantastische en bizarre verbeelding, sterk beïnvloed door Russisch volksgeloof en middeleeuwse kunst. Hij trachtte oude artistieke vormen nieuw leven in te blazen met zijn unieke proza, waarbij hij zijn werken vaak stiliseerde in de trant van middeleeuwse verhalen en legenden. Zijn schrijven verkende regelmatig de duistere kanten van de Russische samenleving en de menselijke psyche, met elementen van satire en gothic horror. Remizov's onderscheidende stem, doordrenkt van volksverbeelding en dromerige visioenen, maakte hem tot een werkelijk originele literaire figuur.
Alexei Remizov was one of the greatest writers of the Russian Symbolist movement. In the thirteen stories collected in this volume, his exceptional stylistic achievements are on full display. The Little Devil and Other Stories includes works from across Remizov's career encompassing his thematic preoccupations and stylistic experimentation.
The first English translation of this remarkable 1910 novel by Alexei Remizov, one of the most influential members of the Russian Symbolist movement, Sisters of the Cross is a masterpiece of early modernist fiction. In the tradition of Gogol's Petersburg Tales and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, it deploys densely packed psychological prose and fluctuating narrative perspective to tell the story of a poor clerk who rebels against the suffering and humiliation afflicting both his own life and the lives of the remarkable women whom he encounters in the tenement building where he lives in Petersburg. Remizov is best known as a writer of short stories and fairy tales, but this early novel, masterfully translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy, is perhaps his most significant work of sustained artistic prose.