Russian Literature

When a stray dog dying on the streets of Moscow is taken in by a wealthy professor, he is subjected to medical experiments in which he receives various transplants of human organs. As he begins to transform into a rowdy, unkempt human by the name of...
By: Mikhail Bulgakov

Now adapted into a new series on Sky Arts starring Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe "The perverse inability of we humans to learn from our mistakes is what beats at the black heart of A Young Doctor's Notebook (Sky Arts 1)" Metro In this collection of...
By: Mikhail Bulgakov

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

The career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of Master and Margarita – now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature – was characterized by a constant and largely unsuccessful struggle against state censorship. This...
By: Mikhail Bulgakov

In a series of nine letters, the narrator tells his friend how he introduced Vera Nikolayevna, a married woman who had been forbidden as a child to read fiction and poetry, to the intellectual pleasures of Goethe’s masterpiece. Opening up in front...
By: Ivan Turgenev

Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Chechen struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling Imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who...
By: Leo Tolstoy

The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled , is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing chaos that occurs. This is Gogol’s humour at its best, where the...
By: Nikolai Gogol

One of the many aspects of Alexander Pushkin’s immense contribution to Russian language and literature, and perhaps the one he is most popular for, is his mastery of the love poem, a genre which he perfected like few others before or after him. This...
By: Alexander Pushkin

Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying-clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to the fore the underclass of St Petersburg, who live at the margins of society in the most appalling...
By: Fyodor Dostoevsky