- The Queen of Spades is one of the most famous tales in Russian literature, and inspired the eponymous opera by Tchaikovsky; in The Stationmaster, from The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, Pushkin reworks the parable of the Prodigal Son; Tsar Nikita and his Forty Daughters is one of Pushkin"s bawdier early poems; and the narrative poem The Bronze Horseman, inspired by a St Petersburg statue of Peter the Great, is one of Pushkin"s best-known and most influential works. The volume also includes a small selection of Pushkin"s best lyric poetry.