Russian category: 1194 books

This book is a study devoted to exploring the use of a Russian version of the Jewish stereotype (the ridiculous Jew) in the works of three of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century. Rosenshield does not attempt to expose the stereotype—which was self-consciously and unashamedly employed....

Lev Tolstoy has held the attention of mankind for well over a century. A supremely talented artist, whose novels and short stories continue to entrance readers all over the world, he was at the same time a fearless moral philosopher who explored and challenged the fundamental bases of human societypolitical,...

The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and...

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background...

The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable...

Two short novels by major 20th-century Russian authors. The Old Arbat by Boris Yampolsky examines the inner state of a hunted man, his fears and his loneliness as he wanders around Moscow trying to escape the shadowing KGB. Unlike Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, however, Yampolsky’s hero is innocent....

Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanovs critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poets life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poets life, which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging...

In this collection of interviews, articles, and editorials, Nabokov ranges over his life, art, education, politics, literature, movies, and modern times, among other subjects.  Strong Opinions offers his trenchant, witty, and always engaging views on everything from the Russian Revolution to the correct pronunciation of Lolita.

With the opening of Russian and communist-bloc archives dating from the Soviet-era, there has been a significant increase of scholarly writings pertaining to Joseph Stalin. Widely considered to be among the most influential historical figures of the twentieth century, Stalin continues to be a source...

Music from a Speeding Train explores the uniquely Jewish space created by Jewish authors working within the limitations of the Soviet cultural system. It situates Russian- and Yiddish- language authors in the same literary universe—one in which modernism, revolution, socialist realism, violence,...

Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the most influential theorists of philosophy as well as literary studies. His work on dialogue and discourse has changed the way in which we read texts – both literary and cultural – and his practice of philosophy in literary refraction and philological exploration has...

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of free speech (and publishing), Russian women have become a force in the world of letters. Where in the past they were known chiefly as literary widows or devoted wives, occasionally as poets or critics, and only very rarely as novelists, today they...

When Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Pushkin’s masterpiece Eugene Onegin was first published in 1964, it ignited a storm of controversy that famously resulted in the demise of Nabokov’s friendship with critic Edmund Wilson. While Wilson derided it as a disappointment in the New York Review of...

Nominated for the Russian Booker Prize and Russia's National Bestseller Prize, and a bestseller on Russia’s equivalent of Amazon for a year. Fyodor is a successful young architect, but far from the ideal father. He’s constantly embarrassed by his 14 year-old son, Vanya, born with Down’s Syndrome,...