`He is a great story-teller, the Toby Litt of his day, you might say, and this translation knocks all the others I have seen (two) into a cocked hat. Terrific.' Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian `The Queen of Spades is surely Pushkin's prose masterpiece, one of the greatest short stories ever written and the source of Tchaikovsky's opera.' The Irish Times (Dublin)