The Greatest Books Written by Russian Authors
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1 . War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of fi...
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2 . Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed and se...
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3 . The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers, is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is mur...
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4 . Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is a murder story, told from a murder;s point of view, that implicates even the most innocent reader in its enormities. It is a cat-and-mouse game between a tormented young killer and a cheerful...
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5 . Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endu...
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6 . The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature. His career as a dram...
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7 . The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot is a novel written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky and first published in 1868. It was first published serially in Russian in Russky Vestnik, St. Petersburg, 1868-1869. The Idiot...
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8 . Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The novel is presented as a poem titled "Pale Fire" with commentary by a friend of the poet's. Together these elements form two story lines in which both authors are central characters. The int...
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9 . The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Possessed is an 1872 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Though titled The Possessed in the initial English translation, Dostoevsky scholars and later translations favour the titles The Devils or Demon...
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10 . Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose",...
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11 . The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita (Russian: Ма́стер и Маргари́та) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consi...
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12 . Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Fathers and Sons is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, his best known work. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the chara...
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13 . Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago is a 20th century novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a medical doctor and poet. It tells the story of a man to...
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14 . Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand's epochal novel, first published in 1957, has been a bestseller for more than four decades as well as an intellectual landmark. It is the story of a man who said that he would stop the mot...
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15 . The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The book follows hi...
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16 . Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superflu...
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17 . The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his conversion to Christianity. The novel tells...
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18 . Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Three Sisters (Russian: Три сeстры, translit. Tri sestry) is a play by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters.[1] I...
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19 . One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary ...
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20 . Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes from Underground is a study of a single character, and a revelation of Dostoyevsky's own deepest beliefs. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the o...
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21 . A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
A Hero of Our Time is a novel by Mikhail Lermontov published in 1840. It tells the story of a young officer, Pechorin, sent to the Caucasus after a duel. This is what the author himself wrote about...
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22 . We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Translated by Natasha Randall Foreword by Bruce Sterling Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes t...
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24 . Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin, a "novel in verse," as announced by its subtitle, and Russia's best-loved classic, was written by Alexander Pushkin, that country's unsurpassed literary idol. Yet the American readin...
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25 . Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969. Ada began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letter...
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26 . Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the 'cancerous' Sovie...
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27 . First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
At the height of Stalin's postwar terror, Innokenty, a young diplomat and scion of a corrupt ruling class, discovers an earlier and more spiritual tradition than that adopted by the October Revolut...
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28 . Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov
Uncle Vanya (Russian: Дядя Ваня – Dyadya Vanya) is a tragicomedy by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov published in 1899. Its first major performance was in 1900 under the direction of Konstantin...
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29 . The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form-in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway-but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. ...
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30 . The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov
"The Lady with the Dog" (Russian: Дама с собачкой, Dama s sobachkoy)[1] is a short story by Anton Chekhov first published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banke...
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31 . The Kreutzer Sonata: And Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
Renowned Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was never one to shy away from complex or unpopular ideas. In the title story of this exquisite collection, named for one of Beethoven's most intricate works, ...
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32 . The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov
The Enchanted Wanderer (Очарованный странник) is a novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in Russky Mir newspaper in 1873 (issues Nos. 272, 274, 276, 279, 281, 283, 286, 288, 290, 293, 295, 297, ...
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33 . The Artamonov Business by Maksim Gorky
The Artamonov Business (Russian: Дело Артамоновых, romanized: Delo Artamonovykh) is a 1941 Soviet drama film directed by Grigori Roshal.
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34 . The Clay Machine-gun by Viktor Pelevin
An intellectually dazzling and hilarious fantasy about identity and Russian history, and a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosphy, The Clay Machine-Gun confirms Victor Pelevin as 'one of the...
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35 . Mother by Maksim Gorky
Mother (Russian: Мать) is a novel written by Maxim Gorky in 1906 about revolutionary factory workers. It was first published, in English, in Appleton's Magazine in 1906, then in Russian in 1907. T...
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36 . Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin
Summer in Baden-Baden (Лето в Бадене) is a book by a Soviet Jewish writer Leonid Tsypkin. It was written in the period from 1977 to 1981, but published in English in 2001 nearly 20 years after his...
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37 . Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin (Russian pronunciation: [pnʲin]) is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's caree...
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38 . Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev
Torrents of Spring, also known as Spring Torrents (Russian: Вешние воды Veshniye vody), is a novel by Ivan Turgenev that was first published in 1872. It is highly autobiographical in nature, and ce...
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39 . The Nose by Nikolai Gogol
"The Nose" (Russian: Нос Nos) is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol written during his time living in St. Petersburg. During this time, Gogol's works were primarily focused on surrealism and ...
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40 . The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the invest...
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41 . The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin
Set in a crumbling Soviet Black Sea resort, The Life of Insects with its motley cast of characters who exist simultaneously as human beings (racketeers, mystics, drug addicts and prostitutes) and a...
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42 . King Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev
A loose and decidely Russian adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear, set in the countryside, the story concerns the disrespectful treatment the protagonist, Kharlov, receives from hi...
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43 . Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Yerofeev
Moscow-Petushki, also published as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations, and Moscow Circles, is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt ...
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44 . Requiem by Anna Akhmatova
Requiem is an elegy by Anna Akhmatova about suffering of people under the Great Purge. It was written over three decades, between 1935 and 1961. She carried it with her, redrafting, as she worked a...
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45 . The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story -- subtle, intrica...
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47 . First Love by Ivan Turgenev
Turgenev is retelling an incident from his own life, his infatuation with a young neighbor in the country, Catherine Shakovskoy (the Zinaida of the novella), an infatuation that lasted until his di...
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48 . August 1914 by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn
Expanded by Solzhenitsyn to almost twice the length of the original edition, this novel reconstructs the assassination of tsarist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolupin and the outbreak of the First World War.
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49 . The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the work...
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50 . Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov
"This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are "The Return," about an officer's difficult homecoming at the end of World War II; "The Ri...
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51 . The Burn: A Novel in Three Books : (late Sixties--early Seventies) by Vassily Aksyonov
Recounts the experiences of Aristarkh Apollinarievich Kunitser, a young scientist living in Moscow during the sixties, who faces the prospect of exile
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53 . Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II a...
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54 . The Return and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov
"Reading Platonov, one gets a sense of the relentless, implacable absurdity built into the language and with each...utterance, that absurdity deepens" - Joseph Brodsky People are on the move in all...
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55 . Petersburg by Andrei Bely
Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translat...
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56 . Resurrection: A Novel by Leo Tolstoy
A rich, visual record of the vices of petty officialdom, Tolstoy's novel of spiritual regeneration recounts the sins of a young Russian nobleman and his attempts in later life to redress those tran...
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57 . The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Based on Dostoevsky's own troubled experiences at the gaming tables, 'The Gambler' is a brilliant and telling portrayal of a man crippled by the overwhelming powers of addiction and obsession.
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58 . The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s an...
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59 . A Reckless Character and Other Stories by Ivan Turgenev
This fine collection of Turgenev's shorter works includes "A Reckless Character," "The Dream," "Father Alexyei's Story," "Odd Portraits," "The Song of Love Triumphant," "Clara Militch," and a large...
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60 . Stories of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich was a Ukrainian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, ...
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61 . The Poetry of Alexander Pushkin by Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born in...
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62 . The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky by Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky continues to be regarded as the greatest literary representative of revolutionary Russia. Born of the people, and having experienced in his own person their sufferings and their misery,...
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