Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirees alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence. Yet Tolstoy's portrayal of marital relations and scenes of domesticity is as truthful and poignant as the grand themes that underlie them.

In this definitive and highly acclaimed Maude translation, Tolstoy's genius and the power of his prose are made newly available to the contemporary reader. In addition this edition includes a new introduction by Amy Mandelker, revised and expanded notes, lists of fictional and historical characters, a chronology of historical events, five maps, and Tolstoy's essay 'Some Words about War and Peace'.

White Nights and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky transports readers to the haunting depths of the human psyche.

In this collection of short stories, Dostoevsky's masterful narrative weaves tales of love, despair and existential contemplation. Each story is a

profound exploration of the complexities of the human soul, leaving an indelible impression.

One death, in exchange for thousands of lives - it's simple arithmetic!

A new translation of Dostoevsky's epic masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866). The impoverished student Raskolnikov decides to free himself from debt by killing an old moneylender, an act he sees as elevating himself above conventional morality. Like Napoleon he will assert his will and his crime will be justified by its elimination of vermin for the sake of the greater good. But Raskolnikov is torn apart by fear, guilt, and a growing conscience under the influence of his love for Sonya. Meanwhile the police detective Porfiry is on his trail. It is a powerfully psychological novel, in which the St Petersburg setting, Dostoevsky's own circumstances, and contemporary social problems all play their part.

This collection brings together ten of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997.

Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide--forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West--and searching for humanity's possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and--perhaps most centrally--the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.

These annotated speeches, including his timeless Nobel Lecture and Harvard Address, have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn's sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn's life.

Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol's peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns--or at once--funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature.

These stories showcase Gogol's vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol's characteristic obsessions--city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise--and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso's translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.

From the celebrated, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov a lavish volume of stories by one of the most influential short fiction writers of all time.

Anton Chekhov left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now, renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories. These stories, which span the complete arc of his career, reveal the extraordinary variety and unexpectedness of his work, from the farcically comic to the darkly complex, showing that there is no one single type of Chekhov story. They are populated by a remarkable range of characters who come from all parts of Russia and all walks of life, including landowners, peasants, soldiers, farmers, teachers, students, hunters, shepherds, mistresses, wives, and children. Taken together, they demonstrate how Chekhov democratized the form.

Included in this volume are tales translated into English for the first time, including Reading and An Educated Blockhead. Early stories such as Joy, Anguish, and A Little Joke sit alongside such later works as The Siren, Big Volodya and Little Volodya, In the Cart, and About Love. In its range, in its narrative artistry, and in its perceptive probing of the human condition, this collection promises profound delight.

Other Russias is the brilliant first collection of graphic journalism by artist and activist Victoria Lomasko. A fixture at Moscow's protests and political trials, Lomasko illuminates the inequality and injustice at the heart of contemporary Russian society and gives voice to Russia's many voiceless citizens. Not content to remain in the capital, she travels the country, visiting schools in dying villages; interviewing sex workers in foundering industrial towns; teaching children at juvenile prisons to draw, all while drawing their stories. Her portraits allow readers to see these people as more than words on paper and to see them as she does: with dignity, compassion, and love. Other Russias is an urgent and poignant work by a major talent.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov delves into the moral dilemmas and existential struggles of the Karamazov family. Set in 19th-century Russia, this profound novel examines themes of faith, reason and the nature of evil, captivating readers with its psychological depth and philosophical inquiry into the human condition.

The young artist and writer Yevgenia Belorusets was in her hometown of Kyiv when Putin's special military operation against Ukraine began on the morning of February 24, 2022. With the shelling of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and Kherson, the war with Russia had clearly, irreversibly begun: I thought, this has been allowed to happen, it is a crime against everything human, against a great common space where we live and hope for a future. With power and clarity, the War Diary of Yevgenia Belorusets documents the long beginning of the devastation and its effects on the ordinary residents of Ukraine; what it feels like to interact with the strangers who suddenly become your countrymen; the struggle to make sense of a good mood on a spring day; the new danger of a routine coffee run. First published in the German newspaper Der Spiegel and then translated and released each day on the site ISOLARII (and on Artforum), the War Diary had an immediate impact worldwide: it was translated by an anonymous collective of writers on Weibo; read live by Margaret Atwood on International Women's Day; adapted for an episode of This American Life on NPR; and brought to the 2022 Venice Biennale by President Zelensky as part of the pavilion This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom.

An unsung classic of nineteenth-century Russian literature, Karolina Pavlova's A Double Life alternates prose and poetry to offer a wry picture of Russian aristocratic society and vivid dreams of escaping its strictures. Pavlova combines rich narrative prose that details balls, tea parties, and horseback rides with poetic interludes that depict her protagonist's inner world--and biting irony that pervades a seemingly romantic description of a young woman who has everything.

A Double Life tells the story of Cecily, who is being trapped into marriage by her well-meaning mother; her best friend, Olga; and Olga's mother, who means to clear the way for a wealthier suitor for her own daughter by marrying off Cecily first. Cecily's privileged upbringing makes her oblivious to the havoc that is being wreaked around her. Only in the seclusion of her bedroom is her imagination freed: each day of deception is followed by a night of dreams described in soaring verse. Pavlova subtly speaks against the limitations placed on women and especially women writers, which translator Barbara Heldt highlights in a critical introduction. Among the greatest works of literature by a Russian woman writer, A Double Life is worthy of a central place in the Russian canon.

The sagas of the ancient Narts are to the Caucasus what Greek mythology is to Western civilization. This book presents, for the first time in the West, a wide selection of these fascinating myths preserved among four related peoples whose ancient cultures today survive by a thread. In ninety-two straightforward tales populated by extraordinary characters and exploits, by giants who humble haughty Narts, by horses and sorceresses, Nart Sagas from the Caucasus brings these cultures to life in a powerful epos.

In these colorful tales, women, not least the beautiful temptress Satanaya, the mother of all Narts, are not only fertility figures but also pillars of authority and wisdom. In one variation on a recurring theme, a shepherd, overcome with passion on observing Satanaya bathing alone, shoots a bolt of lust that strikes a rock--a rock that gives birth to the Achilles-like Sawseruquo, or Sosruquo. With steely skin but tender knees, Sawseruquo is a man the Narts come to love and hate.

Despite a tragic history, the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs have retained the Nart sagas as a living tradition. The memory of their elaborate warrior culture, so richly expressed by these tales, helped them resist Tsarist imperialism in the nineteenth century, Stalinist suppression in the twentieth, and has bolstered their ongoing cultural journey into the post-Soviet future.

Because these peoples were at the crossroads of Eurasia for millennia, their myths exhibit striking parallels with the lore of ancient India, classical Greece, and pagan Scandinavia. The Nart sagas may also have formed a crucial component of the Arthurian cycle. Notes after each tale reveal these parallels; an appendix offers extensive linguistic commentary. With this book, no longer will the analysis of ancient Eurasian myth be possible without a close look at the Nart sagas. And no longer will the lover of myth be satisfied without the pleasure of having read them.

Excerpts from the Nart sagas

The Narts were a tribe of heroes. They were huge, tall people, and their horses were also exuberant Alyps or Durduls. They were wealthy, and they also had a state. That is how the Narts lived their lives. . . .

The Narts were courageous, energetic, bold, and good-hearted. Thus they lived until God sent down a small swallow. . . .

The Narts were very cruel to one another. They were envious of one another. They disputed among themselves over who was the most courageous. But most of all they hated Sosruquo. . . . A rock gave birth to him. He is the son of a rock, illegally born a mere shepherd's son. . . .

In a new introduction, folklorist Adrienne Mayor reflects on these tales both in terms of the fascinating warrior culture they depict and the influence they had on Greco-Roman mythology.

Alexander Griboedov's Woe from Wit is one of the masterpieces of Russian drama. A verse comedy set in Moscow high society after the Napoleonic wars, it offers sharply drawn characters and clever repartee, mixing meticulously crafted banter and biting social critique. Its protagonist, Alexander Chatsky, is an idealistic ironist, a complex Romantic figure who would be echoed in Russian literature from Pushkin onward. Chatsky returns from three years abroad hoping to rekindle a romance with his childhood sweetheart, Sophie. In the meantime, she has fallen in love with Molchalin, her reactionary father Famusov's scheming secretary. Chatsky speaks out against the hypocrisy of aristocratic society--and as scandal erupts, he is met with accusations of madness.

Woe from Wit was written in 1823 and was an immediate sensation, but under heavy-handed tsarist censorship, it was not published in full until forty years later. Its influence is felt not just in Russian literary language but in everyday speech. It is the source of a remarkable number of frequently quoted aphorisms and turns of phrase, comparable to Shakespeare's influence on English. Yet owing to its complex rhyme scheme and verse structure, the play has frequently been considered almost untranslatable. Betsy Hulick's translation brings Griboedov's sparkling wit, spirited dialogue, and effortless crossing of registers from elevated to colloquial into a lively contemporary English.

White Nights, is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, this is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.

Esta es la cuarta obra de Dostoyevski ubicada entre las cien mejores obras de la literatura mundial por el Instituto Nobel y el Club del Libro Noruego. Es, adem s, considerada por el autor como su obra maestra. Inicialmente, este trabajo iba a presentarse en dos novelas, y la segunda narrar a los acontecimientos desarrollados trece a os despu s de los narrados en la primera. Al respecto, el autor anuncia en el prefacio: Pero lo malo es que presento una biograf a en dos novelas. La principal es la segunda, donde la actividad de mi h roe se desarrolla en la poca presente. La primera transcurre hace trece a os.. Sin embargo, la segunda no llegar a a escribirse.

A shoemaker named Simon, who had neither house nor land of his own, lived with his wife and children in a peasant's hut, and earned his living by his work. Work was cheap, but bread was dear, and what he earned he spent for food. The man and his wife had but one sheepskin coat between them for winter wear, and even that was torn to tatters, and this was the second year he had been wanting to buy sheep-skins for a new coat. Before winter Simon saved up a little money: a three-rouble note lay hidden in his wife's box, and five roubles and twenty kopeks were owed him by customers in the village.

A new edition of the Russian Nobelist's collection of novellas, short stories, and prose poems Stories and Prose Poems collects twenty-two works of wide-ranging style and character from the Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose shorter pieces showcase the extraordinary mastery of language that places him among the greatest Russian prose writers of the twentieth century.
When the two superb stories Matryona's House and An Incident at Krechetovka Station were first published in Russia in 1963, the Moscow Literary Gazette, the mouthpiece of the Soviet literary establishment, wrote: His talent is so individual and so striking that from now on nothing that comes from his pen can fail to excite the liveliest interest. The novella For the Good of the Cause and the short story Zakhar-the-Pouch in particular--both published in the Soviet Union before Solzhenitsyn's exile--fearlessly address the deadening stranglehold of Soviet bureaucracy and the scandalous neglect of Russia's cultural heritage.
But readers who best know Solzhenitsyn through his novels will be delighted to discover the astonishing group of sixteen prose poems. In these works of varying lengths--some as short as an aphorism--Solzhenitsyn distills the joy and bitterness of Russia's fate into language of unrivaled lyrical purity.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a short story written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The story follows the narrator, a man who believes himself to be ridiculous, as he experiences a vivid dream that changes his perspective on life. In the dream, the man travels to another world where he witnesses the suffering of others and realizes the importance of compassion and love. He also comes to understand that his own life has meaning and purpose, and he is filled with a newfound sense of hope and joy. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a powerful exploration of the human condition, and Dostoyevsky's masterful prose and insightful commentary make it a timeless classic of Russian literature.I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to be still reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

First published in 1925, 'The White Guard' is an engrossing book in which a Kyiv family is caught up in the Ukrainian War of Independence. Written by Mikhail Bulgakov, a Russian writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century.

Reds, Whites, German troops, and Ukrainian nationalists battle for control of the city of Kyiv as the war becomes more cataclysmic in Mikhail Bulgakov's debut novel. Drawing laboriously from the author's own background in Ukraine during the period of the Russian Civil War-he witnessed ten changes of government himself-the novel is told from alternating points of view and takes an unusual angle on the conflict between Russian Whites (with whom the Turbin family identify) and Ukrainian nationalists. It elegantly portrays the disarray of a civil war in which there is no good or evil, only loyalty to one's friends, family, and convictions.

Dive into the dark recesses of the human soul in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Follow the tormented Raskolnikov as he grapples with guilt, morality, and redemption in 19th-century St. Petersburg. A gripping exploration of the psyche, this timeless classic delves into the consequences of a daring and desperate act.

A boy who feels persecuted by the banality of everyday life yearns to ascend to the cold and majestic plane of the stars. A seamstress finds liberation of a sort in becoming a dog and howling at the moon. A club of young girls masquerade as the grieving fiancées of strange men. This book brings together these and other remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane.

Renowned as one of late imperial Russia's finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siècle avant-garde. He stands out for his masterful command of both realist and fantastic storytelling; his play with language evinces a belief in its capacity to access other worlds and other levels of meaning. Many of Sologub's stories are set among children whose alienation from the adult world has lent them imagination and curiosity, enabling them to create an alternative reality. At the same time, he bluntly examines the sordid realities of late imperial Russian society and frankly presents sometimes unconventional sexuality. The book also features a selection of Sologub's little fairy tales, ambiguous parables couched in childlike language whose ingenuity anticipates the miniatures and incidents of Daniil Kharms. Susanne Fusso's elegant translation offers these artful tales to an English-speaking audience.