Anecdote as a genre of Russian literature

In terms of historical memory, the fate of the Russian joke is extremely complex and even truly dramatic. His whole century hardly tried not to notice, actually ignored, and this also applies to the people"s joke, and a joke of the literary. Anecdote as a genre did not exist.
Efim Kurganov, the author of several books on the theory and history of the literary joke, for the first time in philological science builds a pedigree Russian joke, shows how this genre bloomed in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Leskova, Chekhov, Dovlatov. Anecdote becomes not just an artistic mechanism of individual works, but forms a whole figurative system of the authors, determines their narrative manner (or his story manner).
Reading the book turns into an exciting research excursion in the footsteps of a joke in Russian literature, in which the reader meets with rare treasures of literary jokes collected by the author. The book is intended for both specialists and a wide circle of readers