Russian Literature

Inspired by Dostoevsky’s own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows...
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

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...
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky

This collection of Pushkin’s shorter fiction begins with The Queen of Spades , perhaps the most celebrated short story in Russian literature. The young Hermann, while watching some friends gambling, hears a rumour of how an officer’s grandmother is...
By: Alexander Pushkin

A secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official’s son, with a view to spying on the father and, ultimately, assassinating him. But the young man entrusted with the task – an ailing, world-weary “nobody” – seized with the...
By: Anton Chekhov

Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the seemingly undistinguished items he finds inside take on a...
By: Sergei Dovlatov

Set in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during the chaotic winter of 1918–19, The White Guard , Bulgakov’s first full-length novel, tells the story of a Russian-speaking family trapped in circumstances that threaten to destroy them. As in Tolstoy’s War...
By: Mikhail Bulgakov

Based on Dovlatov’s actual experience of being a prison guard in Soviet Russia in the 1960s, and full of comic and humane detail, The Zone depicts the absurd day-to- day life of a camp in an insightful and unusual way, challenging commonly held...
By: Sergei Dovlatov

In the title piece of this collection a party of guests wonder at the great comet which has appeared in the sky, and give their predictions of what this ill omen portends for the Earth. Mixing elements of the Gothic with fantasy, this piece marks...
By: Vladimir Odoevsky

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