Hughes, Langston [Trouble With the Angels and Other Stories]. Nepriiatnoe Proisshestvie s Angelami i Drumie Rasskazy.

Translation from English and preface by T. Shinkar’.
Edited by O. Kholmskaia.

Moskva, Izdatelstvo Inostannoi literatury, 1955.
8vo, 128 pp.

In original pictorial wrappers.
In good condition, light wear to wrappers, small crease to upper corner of front cover.

First edition of these Russian translations of Hughes' stories.

It is believed that Langston Hughes (1901–1967), a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, succeeded Claude McKay as the primary Black advocate for the USSR after McKay’s rejection of communism in the early 1930s. Hughes's first book to be published in Russian was a translation of his debut novel ‘Not Without Laughter’ in 1932. That same year, Hughes joined a group of Black Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union to work on a film about the plight of African Americans in the United States. Hughes was hired to write the English dialogue for the film. Although the project was ultimately abandoned - likely due to the Soviet Union’s success in securing U.S. recognition and the establishment of an embassy in Moscow in 1933 - Hughes was given the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the USSR, including to Soviet-controlled regions of Central Asia, areas typically closed to Westerners. Meanwhile, his works, mostly poetry, continued to be published in Russian sporadically, with more frequent publications in the 1930s and 1950s, up until the late 1980s.
This collection includes the following 20 stories by Hughes: ‘Trouble With the Angels’, ‘African Morning’, ‘Berry’, ‘One Friday Morning’, ‘Professor’, ‘Little Old Spy’, ‘On the Road’, ‘Why, You Reckon?’, ‘Who's Passing for Who?’, ‘Tain't So’, ‘Mysterious Madame Shanghai’, ‘The Law’, ‘When a Man Sees Red’, ‘Banquet in Honor’, ‘Equality and Dogs’, ‘Dear Dr. Butts’, ‘Question Period’, ‘Simple Santa’, ‘Something to Lean On’, and ‘Pushcart Man’.
The book was translated and prefaced by Tatiana Shinkar’ (1914–2011), best known for her Russian translation of ‘Fahrenheit 451’, the first of Bradbury’s books to be translated into Russian, which was published the year after this Hughes book.

Libman, # 7293.

We couldn’t trace any copy of this edition via OCLC in the USA. The National Library of Israel has a copy.