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Jun 4, 2024 · By. Jeffrey Somers. Jeff Somers is an award-winning writer who has authored nine novels, over 40 short stories, and "Writing Without Rules," a non-fiction book about the business and craft of writing. Updated on June 04, 2024. Russian literature has long been one of the richest and most interesting branches of the literary tree.
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Harper Perennial One of the most deceptively simple novels...
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- Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy.
- The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky.
- War and Peace Leo Tolstoy.
- The Tale of Igor's Campaign (1185) This "tale of woe" about Prince Igor's unsuccessful campaign against the Polovtsians, a Turkic nomadic people, is one of the oldest surviving works of Russian literature, believed to have been written around 1185.
- The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself (1672) It is with the genre of hagiography that all ancient Russian literature essentially begins.
- Russian folktales. Folktales were passed down orally from generation to generation; even adults listened to them in the evening while weaving or sewing or doing other work.
- Alexander Radishchev. Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (1790) As a civil servant, Radishchev traveled many times between Russia’s two capitals and observed the lives of the peasants along the way.
- Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 828 votes. Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866.
- War and Peace. Leo Tolstoy. 701 votes. War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature.
- Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy. 792 votes. Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger.
- The Brothers Karamazov. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 688 votes. The Brothers Karamazov, sometimes also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- Eugene Onegin, 1832, by Alexander Pushkin
- Dead Souls, 1842, by Nikolai Gogol
- Fathers and Sons, 1862, by Ivan Turgenov
- Crime and Punishment, 1866, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- War and Peace, 1869, by Leo Tolstoy
- Doctor Zhivago, 1957, by Boris Pasternak
- One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1962, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Roadside Picnic, 1972, by Arkady and Boris Sugatsky
- Lolita, 1955, by Vladimir Nabokov
- Time of Women (Vremia Zhenshchin), 2009, by Elena Chizhova
Eugene Oneginis, strictly speaking, a poem, but is usually described as “A Novel in Verse.” Whichever, it’s a very important Russian work of fiction. The eponymous protagonist,the legendary Eugene Onegin, has entered Russian culture so deeply that he has become a model for Russian heroes. It is a long, complex novel with a stark view of a society t...
Dead Soulsis one of the few great nineteenth-century Russian novels that does not deal with the turbulence of Russian politics. It is set in Imperial Russia and involves a government official who exploits the weaknesses of a crumbling imperial bureaucracy and building a personal fortune by corruptly buying up the entitlements of dead serfs on the e...
Fathers and Sonsis one of the most highly regarded Russian novels both by readers and by critics. Like the other novels of its generation, it is set against the unstable, swiftly changing times in Russia. It’s regarded as the best fictional account of intergenerational relations. It tells the story of two young men, Arkady, who returns home from co...
Crime and Punishment is a huge novel, exploring the theme of alienation. The protagonist, Raskolnikov, is isolated from the rest of humanity because of his pride – his belief that he is superior to everyone else, making it impossible for him to relate to other people. He views other people as pawns in his game of life, to be used to achieve his end...
War and Peaceis a huge novel that is in some respects an historical novel, which it seems to be, but it transcends all genres. It’s a family saga, a war novel, a romantic novel – it is all of those. It is also notable for its length. Tolstoy himself declined to describe it as a novel – it was, he said, a fictional account of a detailed history of t...
Doctor Zhivagois a novel with an eponymous protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a doctor and poet It is set over some thirty years, between the Russian Revolution (1905) and World War II. It is a love story set in a turbulent time. It addresses themes of loneliness, uncertainty regarding the state of things, disillusionment with the revolutionary spirit that...
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an autobiographical novel set in around 1950 in aUSSR labour camp, detailing a single day of inmate, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov’s imprisonment. On his return to Russia after having been a prisoner of war in Germany he is accused of being a spy for the West. He is innocent but sentenced to ten years hard labour...
Roadside Picnic is a novel unusually written by two writers, the Sugatsky brothers. It was a best seller and still ranks among the most popular and widely translated Russian novels. It could be seen as a science fiction novel as it s setting and premise are typical of science fiction. It is set in Harmont, a town in one of several locations that ha...
Lolita is not only written in English but has become an American classic. It is included here because Nabokov was a Russian and wrote several novels in Russian before emigrating to the United States. It was also one of the most controversial novels because of its bold exploration of pedophilia. The protagonist is a middle-aged literature professor ...
Time of Women is setin 1960s Leningrad. The five female protagonists take turns in narrating the story, five female protagonists take turns narrating the story. Factory worker Antonina is abandoned by her lover, and left with a mute child. Three old women take them in and when Antonina gets ill with cancer they plot to marry her off to a man she do...
Jun 25, 1998 · The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. ← Explore other reading lists like this one. Delve into the rich tapestry of Russian literature with the most acclaimed books as chosen by leading literary blogs and publications.
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Aug 31, 2022 · by Mikhail Bulgakov. Read. Let’s talk about The White Guard (1925) by Mikhail Bulgakov now and why you chose it as one of your five Russian novels. I was saying before how I find reading novels an aid to the imagination of a time and place. The White Guard does that for Kyiv in 1918.
