In this novella, a woman conducts an affair in silence “broken only by the measured ticking of her husband’s pocket watch,” which “didn’t interfere with anything.” In this novella, a young boy with a “squirrel-skin coat” reads the lives of the saints while down with chicken pox. A character in this novella dreams of a crescent moon and a fluffy gray tomcat, the latter of which is the spirit of her father-in-law. In this novella, a woman gives her lover blue (*) stockings with clocks on them, which she later sees on another woman’s legs. The last chapters of this novella center on a group of convicts, including Fiona and Sonetka, the latter of whom is thrown off a barge into the Volga. This novella’s title character murders her father-in-law Boris, her husband Zinovy, and the sick child Fyodor Lyamin so she can be with Sergei. For 10 points, Katerina Lvovna is compared to a Shakespeare villainess in what novella by Nikolai Leskov? ■END■
ANSWER: A Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District [or Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk or Ledi Makbet Mtsenskovo uyezda]
<John Lawrence, European Literature>
= Average correct buzz position