Pushkin

Author Robert Chandler reads from and discusses Pushkin.

Alexander Pushkin is considered Russia's greatest poet. He also experimented with other genres – narrative poems, dramas, short stories, prose novels – and his influence on poets and novelists in Russia and beyond has been inestimable.

Robert Chandler, author of the exquisite Brief Lives: Alexander Pushkin, discusses Pushkin as writer, lover and public figure. He explores his relationship to politics and provides a fascinating glimpse of the turbulent history Pushkin lived through, and a succinct and sympathetic introduction for anybody trying to understand Russia's most celebrated literary figure – and, indeed, Russia itself.

Robert Chandler has translated the poetry of Sappho and Apollinaire. His translations from Russian include Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, Pushkin's Dubrovsky and The Captain's Daughter and numerous works by Andrey Platonov. His translations have won prizes in both the UK and the USA. He teaches part time at Queen Mary College, University of London, and has published poems in the TLS and Poetry Review.