Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, almost exclusively remembered today as the author of the prototypical "Masochistic" novel Venus in Furs, was, in fact, a thinker of far-reaching aspirations and abilities. The present volume is one of the first representative collections the Austrian writer's shorter works in over a century.

Ranging from Viennese high-society to the lives of minorities in the east of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the tales herein explore Sacher-Masoch's preoccupation with ongoing social disparities, the symbolism of Slavic mythology, and both the cruelty and nobility of the feminine soul. Featuring frenzied romantics, peasants, Sadistic noblewomen, artists, and eccentrics, The Black Gondola and Other Stories offers a new assessment of the fiction of one of the most interesting German-language authors, whose work, encompassing the poetic, macabre, and erotic, was also often surprisingly compassionate.