I had read some of this material previously. That is to be expected when you are talking about the short novels of extremely famous authors. I was looking forward to rereading the two I was already familiar with - Mann’s Death in Venice and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The remainder of the collection swings from excellent to so-so. In spite of its fame, I cannot bring myself to enjoy Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Far too much dissertation about what is being seen. On the other hand, such entries as Melville’s Bonito Cereno (based on true events where a captain and crew are coerced on a mutinous ship), Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (the study of a judge who has lived the life that is expected, but finds himself dying without a good explanation – either physically or morally), and James’ The Aspern Papers (in which a man tries to finagle access to a dead poet’s letters by wooing the owner’s daughter, in the process mixing his emotions up with his desire for the documents) are excellent.

On the one hand, it is hard to go wrong with a collection of such famous authors. But it would be easy, because these are shorter works, to not see the best. (Dostoyevsky strikes me as the perfect example.) All to say that this turns into a pleasurable experience, even with the slower aspects.

(One quick note – skip the introduction, unless you revel in academic gobbled-gook. I eventually gave up, finding both spoilers and boring, useless information. ( )