My Favorite Russian Classics

Explore the best Russian classics with this curated list of must-read books. Discover timeless literature from Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and more for your next favorite read.

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Eugene Onegin Cover
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Eugene Onegin

 

No summary available.
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War and Peace Cover
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War and Peace

by graf Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.
Anna Karenina Cover
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Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

A drama of vengeance, infidelity, and retribution, "Anna Karenina" portrays the story of people whose emotions conflict with the dominant social mores of their time. Sensual, rebellious Anna falls deeply and passionately in love with the handsome Count Vronsky. When she refuses to conduct the discreet affair that her husband and Russian high society would condone, she is doomed.
The Idiot Cover
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The Idiot

 

No summary available.
A Hero of Our Time Cover
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A Hero of Our Time

by Mikhail Lermontov

In its adventurous happenings–its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues–A 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 ’30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin–the archetypal Russian antihero–Lermontov’s novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible. This edition includes a Translator’s Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, who translated the novel in collaboration with his son, Dmitri Nabokov.
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ID: 1592246516
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ID: 0679435948
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol Cover
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

by Nikolai Gogol

When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself "amazed." "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places what poetry! . . . I still haven't recovered." More than a century and a half later, Nikolai Gogol's stories continue to delight readers the world over. Now a stunning new translation--from an award-winning team of translators--presents these stories in all their inventive, exuberant glory to English-speaking readers. For the first time, the best of Gogol's short fiction is brought together in a single volume: from the colorful Ukrainian tales that led some critics to call him "the Russian Dickens" to the Petersburg stories, with their black humor and wonderfully demented attitude toward the powers that be. All of Gogol's most memorable creations are here: the minor official who misplaces his nose, the downtrodden clerk whose life is changed by the acquisition of a splendid new overcoat, the wily madman who becomes convinced that a dog can tell him everything he needs to know. These fantastic, comic, utterly Russian characters have dazzled generations of readers and had a profound influence on writers such as Dostoevsky and Nabokov. Now they are brilliantly rendered in the first new translation in twenty-five years--one that is destined to become the definitive edition of Gogol's most important stories.
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ID: 0192828800
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ID: 0192834126
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ID: 0140440402
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ID: 0140444912
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ID: 0882339338
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ID: 5040079842
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ID: 1566634261
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Doctor Zhivago Cover
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Doctor Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak

In the grand tradition of the epic novel, Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece brings to life the drama and immensity of the Russian Revolution through the story of the gifted physician-poet, Zhivago; the revolutionary, Strelnikov; and Lara, the passionate woman they both love. Caught up in the great events of politics and war that eventually destroy him and millions of others, Zhivago clings to the private world of family life and love, embodied especially in the magical Lara. First published in Italy in 1957, Doctor Zhivago was not allowed to appear in the Soviet Union until 1987, twenty-seven years after the author’s death. Translated by Manya Harari and Max Hayward
Lolita Cover
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Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

The famous novel about a European intellectual in America, whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him.
The Master and Margarita Cover
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The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

Originally published: Dana Point, Calif.: Ardis, 1995.
Heart of a Dog Cover
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Heart of a Dog

by Mikhail Bulgakov

A Moscow man is put in charge of purging the city of cats.
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ID: 0810114844
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ID: 1572010282
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