Russian Literature

A tale of intrigue, deception, murder and retribution, Boris Godunov charts the rise and fall of an ambitious prince who cannot avoid facing the consequences of his dark past. Based on the historical figure of the nobleman Boris Godunov, who seized...
By: Alexander Pushkin

After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian...

The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and...
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

When the Romantic and world-weary dandy Eugene Onegin moves from St Petersburg to take up residence in the country estate he has inherited, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his mild-mannered neighbour, the poet Vladimir Lensky. Coldly...
By: Alexander Pushkin

In Bulgakov’s ‘Diaboliad’, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the First Central Depot for the Materials for Matches, and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior Kalsoner,...
By: Mikhail Bulgakov

Fathers and Children , arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 – the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing...
By: Ivan Turgenev

Tolstoy’s first published work, completed in 1856, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth recounts his early life up to his university days. These are not memoirs in the strict sense of the word, as the author’s Stendhalian take on the autobiographical genre...
By: Leo Tolstoy

In order to rescue his beloved Lyudmila, who has been abducted by the evil wizard Chernomor, the warrior Ruslan faces an epic and perilous quest, encoutering a multitude of fantastic and terrifying characters along the way. The basis for Glinka's...
By: Alexander Pushkin

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny's irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable...
By: Leo Tolstoy