Some Russian Lit
Explore classic and modern Russian literature with our curated list of must-read books. Discover Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and more iconic authors.
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And Quiet Flows the Don
by Mikhail Sholokhov
WINNER OF NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE, 1965 WINNER OF THE STALIN PRIZE, 1941 Mikhail Sholokhovâs groundbreaking epic novel gives a sweeping depiction of Russian life and culture in the early 20th century. In the same vein as War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, And Quiet Flows the Don gives readers a glimpse into many aspects of Russian culture, and the choices a country makes when faced with war and destruction. In his enormous epic of Cossack life during the Revolution...Mikhail Sholokhov has achieved even greater power, sustained narrative gift and stirring human truthfulness.ââNew York Times âIn addition to its panoramic grandeur, the wealth of its characters and its historic realism, Sholokhov's book is memorable for its portrayal of the primitive and already almost legendary life of the Don Cossacks.ââMalcolm Cowley, New Republic
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A Hero of Our Time
by Mikhail Lermontov
In its adventurous happeningsâits abductions, duels, and sexual intriguesâA Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and â30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorinâthe archetypal Russian antiheroâLermontovâs novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible. This edition includes a Translatorâs Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, who translated the novel in collaboration with his son, Dmitri Nabokov.
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Notes from Underground; the Double
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
âIt is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!âAlienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevskyâs groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the âant-hillâ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence âundergroundâ. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him â his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulsonâs introduction discusses the storiesâ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksyâs great novels.
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The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevskyâs classic tale of one manâs pure innocence in the face of a society obsessed with power, money, and manipulation The twenty-six-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and âbe among people.â Even before he reaches home he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchantâs son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation. Scandal escalates to murder as Dostoevsky traces the surprising effect of this âpositively beautiful manâ on the people around him, leading to a final scene that is one of the most powerful in all of world literature. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonskyâs masterful translation of The Idiot is destined to stand with their versions of Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Demons as the definitive Dostoevsky in English.
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The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories
by graf Leo Tolstoy
Murder, greed, lust, vanity, love-four of Tolstoy's most famous and essential stories in one volume.
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War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Introduction by A. N. Wilson ⢠Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoyâs genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicleâall of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individualâs place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: âTo read him . . . is to find oneâ s way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.â
