Lazarus

Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919) was one of the most striking voices in Russian literature at the turn of the 20th century. Trained as a lawyer, he became a journalist and then a writer, gaining early recognition for his intense short stories and plays. His work combined psychological realism with elements of horror, mysticism, and philosophical inquiry. Andreyev was closely associated with Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov, though his voice was darker and more expressionistic. He explored the edges of human experience—madness, death, moral collapse—often pushing beyond the limits of realism into a realm of metaphysical dread. He was married twice and had several children, including Daniil Andreyev, a poet and mystic who would later write from within Soviet prisons. After the 1917 Revolution, which he opposed, Andreyev left Russia and spent his final years in Finland, where he died in 1919. His fiction remains unsettling and unforgettable—work that doesn't just portray fear, but penetrates it.