Shadowed paths (original 1943; edition 1964)

I gave up about 3/4 of the way through this collection of short stories, because they were just getting to be too much the same. Bunin, a Russian writer who fled after the revolution, wrote this collection in the south of France during the Nazi era "to escape to a different world" as the interesting biographical and critical notes at the end of this edition say. The stories, which mostly take place in the prerevolutionary era (although some take place post-revolution, in French exile), all focus on love, mostly the loss of love, some purely "romantic," others more physical; some trite, some moving, some irritatingly sexist. But what kept me going was Bunin's wonderful depictions of the varied beauties of the Russian countryside, and the often decaying houses and estates within it. Apparently he first set out to be a poet, and these sections are the highlights, for me, of the stories.