The Last Leaf/Последний лист

The main idea of ​​the story is the idea of ​​hidden nobility, which can be singled out as one of several main ideas of the American writer O. Henry (1862-1910). As the recognized master of the short story he brilliantly maintains in the narrative the principles of construction required for this genre — naturalness, accessibility and brevity. Despite the fact that the heroes of the story are depicted simply and easily, the images of the characters have integrity and psychological persuasiveness, which makes the reader feel genuine empathy.

This book is the eighth in the “English for Pleasure” series. In each book in the series, the original is given alongside its literary translation. The texts are placed on double-page spreads. Thus, the reader sees the work in two languages ​​simultaneously. This ensures the implementation of a unique feature of our diglots — the possibility of synchronous reading. Bilingual reading is an effective technique in learning a foreign language and has a number of important advantages: it minimizes the need to use a dictionary, which saves time and does not distract from reading, promotes accelerated vocabulary acquisition and its better memorization. All together, it effectively develops a sense of language, promotes freedom of speech, and a clearer and more precise expression of one’s thoughts.

This edition is intended for native Russian speakers learning English and vice versa, for native English speakers learning Russian.