This is a brief textbook on complex analysis intended for the students of upper undergraduate or beginning graduate level. The author stresses the aspects of complex analysis that are most important for the person planning to study algebraic geometry and related topics. The exposition is rigorous but elementary: abstract notions are introduced only if they are really indispensable. This approach provides a motivation for the reader to digest more abstract definitions (e.g., those of sheaves or line bundles, which are not mentioned in the book) when he/she is ready for that level of abstraction indeed. In the chapter on Riemann surfaces, several key results on compact Riemann surfaces are stated and proved in the first nontrivial case (i.e., that of elliptic curves).

Serge Lvovski is associate professor at the Faculty of Mathematics of Higher School of Economics, Moscow, and research fellow in the Laboratory of Algebraic Geometry and its Applications.