Russian Literature in Translation

Beloved works by Russian authors translated into English.
Updated September 19, 2022
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War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910.
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind...
Fathers and sons
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich
Turgenev's timeless tale of generational collision, in a sparkling new translation When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his eager, na ve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend...
Brothers Karamazov
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.
Dostoevsky's greatest novel is a story of murder told with hair-raising intellectual clarity and a feeling for the human condition unsurpassed in world literature. Fyodor Dostoevsky's final novel, published just before his death in 1881, chronicles the bitter love-hate struggle...
Anna Karenin
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Anna is the gracious wife of Karenin, an ageing government official. She meets Count Vronsky through whom she rediscovers her passionate nature. Leaving her home and child to be with Vronsky, Anna defies society and convention. But as love dies away, suffering, and finally tragedy take its place.
We
Zami?atin, Evgenii? Ivanovich, 1884-1937.
"[Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism-- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself--makes [We] superior to Huxley's [Brave New World]."--George Orwell Translated by Natasha Randall * Foreword by Bruce Sterling  
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
Solzhenit?syn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918-2008.
The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journalNovy Mir in 1962,One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it...
Master & Margarita
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940.
The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, this classic novel was written during Stalin's regime and could not be published until many years after its author's death. When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates--including a...
Oblomov
Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy - a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he lives in a grubby, crumbling apartment, waited on...
Eugene Onegin
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837.
Outstanding translation of Pushkin's most acclaimed work recounts a tale of post-Napoleonic society in which a jaded young aristocrat rejects the love of a country maiden. This edition is enhanced by 16 lithographs.
Dead souls
Gogol?, Nikolai? Vasil?evich, 1809-1852.
Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls is the great comic masterpiece of Russian literature-a satirical and splendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces. Gogol hoped to show the world "the untold riches of the Russian soul" in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a...
The big green tent
Ulit Łskai Ła, Li Łudmila
The Big Green Tent epitomizes what we think of when we imagine the classic Russian novel. With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya's remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly,...
We the living
Rand, Ayn.
First published in 1936, this inspiring and defiant novel by the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged has sold nearly two million copies. Portraying the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives, We the Living is...
Doctor Zhivago
Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960.
  In the grand tradition of the epic novel, Boris Pasternak's masterpiece brings to life the drama and immensity of the Russian Revolution through the story of the gifted physician-poet, Zhivago; the revolutionary, Strelnikov; and Lara, the passionate woman they both love. Caught up...
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon- acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game...
Invitation to a beheading
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition....
Chekhov : the four major plays
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
In these fresh, vibrant new translations of Chekhov's four greatest plays-Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and Cherry Orchard-the brilliant theatrical translator Curt Columbus recaptures the master's open-ended simplicity. Curt Columbus loves actors and his new translations of Chekhov's four...
Selected poems
T?Svetaeva, Marina, 1892-1941.
An acclaimed translation of the best work of the passionate Russian poet An admired contemporary of Rilke, Akhmatova, and Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva was a witness to the political turmoil and the social devastation wrought by the Russian Revolution and a powerfully inspired...
Selected poems
Mandel?shtam, Osip, 1891-1938.
James Greene's acclaimed translations of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, now in an extensively revised and augmented edition.
Winter queen
Akunin, B.
Moscow, May 1876: What would cause a talented young student from a wealthy family to shoot himself in front of a promenading public in the Alexander Gardens? Decadence and boredom, most likely, is what the commander of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Police thinks, but still he...

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