It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Night Owls

Night Owls

Summary

'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 Márya Martýnovna next door. Her exuberant deformations of morality and language scandalized Tsarist society, and she remains one of Russian literature’s most uproarious anti-heroes.

About the author

Nikolay Leskov

Nikolai Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo in Russia. He began his writing career as a journalist living in Kiev, and later settled in St. Petersburg. He published his first piece of fiction in 1862 in The Northern Bee, and continued on to write and publish many short stories and novellas, including The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865), The Sealed Angel (1873), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and Lefty(1882). He died in February 1895.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more