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Book 1. The Portrait of Dorian Gray

The Portrait of Dorian Gray is the pinnacle of Oscar Wilde's preached aestheticism and at the same time a great artistic force in denying the decadent extremes of this concept; it is one of the most paradoxical novels of modernism.

According to the writer himself, «the true moral of this work is that all exaggeration, as well as self-denial, entails punishment». A moral crime leads to the collapse of aesthetics. Another, and perhaps the most important lesson of this novel is that a person cannot flirt too much with either art or life.

Book 2. Ukrainian Stories

The selection of Nikolai Gogol, a brilliant Ukrainian writer who wrote in Russian and became a classic of Russian literature, includes the best translations of all the "Ukrainian" stories from the collections "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" and "Mirgorod". Namely:

• «Sorochynska Fair»
• «EVENING ON THE EVE OF MIDNIGHT»
• «MAY NIGHT, or the Drowned» (translated by Maksym Rylsky)
• «THE MISSING LETTER»
• «THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS» (translated by Maksym Rylsky)
• «A FEARFUL REVENGE»
• «IVAN FEDOROVICH SHPNKA AND HIS AUNT» (translated by Nikolai Zerov)
• «THE ENCHANTED PLACE»
• «OLD WORLD LANDLORDS»
• «WAR»
• «THE TALE OF HOW IVAN IVANOVICH FELL OUT WITH IVAN NIKIFOROVICH» (translated by M.Rylsky)
• «Taras Bulba» (translated by Mykola Sadovsky)