Essayist and poet Joseph Brodsky was one of the penetrating voices of the twentieth century. This collection of his diverse essays includes appreciations of great writers: on Dostoevsky and the development of Russian prose, on Auden and Akhmatova, Cavafy, Montale and Mandelstam.
Joseph Brodsky died in January 1996. His last post was Five Colleges Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College. In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky's other collection of essays On Grief and Reason is being reissued alongside Less than One in Penguin Modern Classics.
