Wolf Schmid is a professor of Slavic studies (in particular Russian and Czech literature) at the University of Hamburg. Author of the books: “Text structure in the stories of F.M. Dostoevsky" (no-German, Munich 1973, 2nd ed. Amsterdam 1986), "Aesthetic content. On the semantic function of formal devices" (no-German, Lisse 1977), "Ornamental narration in Russian modernism" (no-German, Frankfurt 1992), "Pushkin's prose in poetic reading. Belkin's Stories" (in German, Munich 1991; in Russian, St. Petersburg 1996). The chapters of the published book are united by an unconventional approach to the subject of research - the art of storytelling in Russian prose of the 19th-20th centuries. The author pays special attention to those hybrid types of prose, where a network of poetic devices is superimposed on the narrative outline of the text. The author offers original interpretations of some classic works of Russian literature and examines a number of theoretical problems that have become the subject of lively discussions in European scholarship, but are still largely new to Russian literary studies.