The Russian Novel
In the second half of the 19th century, Russian literature produced a concentration of genius unmatched in any national tradition. These eight novels form the core of Russian literature courses worldwide. Listen free on HearCandy.
Dead Souls
A con man travels Russia buying the legal records of dead serfs. Gogol’s 1842 satirical novel invented the tradition of grotesque Russian comedy — Kafka, Bulgakov, and Nabokov all start here.
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Fathers and Sons
A young nihilist comes home from university and argues with everyone. Turgenev’s 1862 novel coined the word ‘nihilism’ and perfectly captured the Russian generational conflict of its era.
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Crime and Punishment
A student murders two women to test his theory that extraordinary men are above morality. What follows is one of the most psychologically intense explorations of guilt ever written.
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War and Peace
Napoleon invades Russia. Tolstoy follows five aristocratic families through war, love, and transformation. Often called the greatest novel ever written — and it might be.
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The Idiot
Prince Myshkin is purely good — and his goodness destroys everything around him. Dostoyevsky’s 1869 novel asks what happens when a genuinely Christlike person enters ordinary society.
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Anna Karenina
Tolstoy opens with a perfect sentence and never lets up. Anna’s affair and its consequences unfold against the full texture of Russian aristocratic and rural life. One of the great novels.
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The Brothers Karamazov
Three brothers, a murdered father, and every question about God, free will, and human nature that Dostoyevsky had spent his life asking. His final novel and his greatest.
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich
A magistrate dies slowly and realizes his life has been a lie. Tolstoy’s 1886 novella is the shortest and most devastating work in this collection — read it in one sitting.
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