Russian literature has a deservedly
prominent place on the world scene. It is clever, creative,
incisive, illuminating and often extremely funny. What appears
on this page is just an introduction, a tiny percentage of
the manifold joys of Russian writing.
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Crime
and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A fascinating story that can be read
on several levels, about a man who decides to commit
murder as a sort of experiment. Set in St Petersburg
during Czarist times, this is a classic not to be missed.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
Recommended
by: Georgie, Director of JMJ Manchester
Click here to read about JMJ
- the school, the teachers and the director. |
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| In
brackets…
You might be interested to compare Crime and Punishment
with a short story called The
Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849),
who was writing in America at more or less the same
time as Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was writing in Russia.
You might also like to
contrast these with another short story, with a very
different tone and ending, Murder!
by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). |
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The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky Is
he an idiot or is he a saint? Prince Myshkin's behaviour
shows up the attitudes and priorities of the society
around him.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
Recommended by: Alexander, student at JMJ |
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The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky A
powerful story about four brothers in the aftermath
of their father's murder. Through their very different
characters, it explores the nature of good and evil.
Another masterpiece from Dostoevsky.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Alexander |
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The Gambler
by Fyodor Dostoevsky A short
story (here in a set of three), not without autobiographical
content.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
Recommended
by: Alexander |
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai
Gogol
by Nikolai Gogol These
satirical stories are entertaining to read just for
fun but they are also sharp comments on society, bureaucracy
and corruption in nineteenth-century Russia.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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The Queen of Spades
and Other Stories
by Alexander Pushkin Passion and gambling in
St Petersburg high society.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
This well known and excellent
novel tells the story of a married woman who falls in
love with another man. It tracks the passion of their
relationship and how it plays out in the polite circles
in which they move.
I read this twenty years
ago but it made a deep impression and I still remember
a great deal of it.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
Recommended by: Georgie |
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War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy The
famously long novel about some extremely turbulent times.
Don't be put off by the length - once you're into it,
you won't want to put it down.
Click
here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Nelly, student at JMJ |
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Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev Inter-generational conflict.
Controversial in its time and still relevent today.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Nelly |
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| Anton
Chekhov Chekhov is certainly
someone with whom every student of Russian should be
familiar. Among his most famous plays are: The Seagull,
The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya. I would recommend
that you see them performed rather than reading them
but if you'd like to read them, you can find them by
clicking here.
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Georgie |
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Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak An epic tale set in early
twentieth-century Russia, depicting war, suffering and
intense love.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Caroline, student at JMJ |
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Nicholas and Alexandra
by Robert K. Massie The fascinating
story of the last Tsar and his wife, their haemophiliac
son and the dread Rasputin, very well retold.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Helen, teacher at JMJ |
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| Soviet-era
literature |
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Mother
by Maxim Gorky The lives of working-class people
(for a change) in the run-up to the Revolution of 1905.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Alexander, student at JMJ |
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The Master
and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
An extraordinary novel written under
Stalin's dictatorship. The devil comes to Moscow with
two friends, puts on a magic show and causes havoc.
Meanwhile, the Master is writing a book describing Jesus's
journey to the cross, from a fresh and illuminating
angle. Chapters from his book are interspersed with
the main narrative about the adventures of the devil,
his cronies and their convert Margarita, the Master's
love.
It may sound a bit weird but this book
is fantastic! I've read it three times, which is unheard-of
for me.
Also, it's hard to overestimate the
influence this book has had on writers, musicians and
magicians, never mind the average reader.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie (and everyone else I know who
has read it, both Russian and English) |
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The Heart of a Dog
by Mikhail Bulgakov An unusual story that can
be interpreted in many ways, about a professor who transplants
organs from a recently deceased man into a stray dog.
The result is an animal who walks and talks like a human
but still enjoys chasing cats.
Funny and thought-provoking, highly recommended.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Alexander |
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In
brackets…
Animal
Farm by George Orwell is a variation on the same
theme. An excellent book, not as overtly bleak as 1984
(see below) but equally disturbing.
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The White Guard
by Mikhail Bulgakov The effects of the Russian
Revolution on a middle-class family.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Alexander |
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One Day in the Life
of Ivan Denisovich
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Day-to-day
life in one of Stalin's gulags. A short, accessible
and memorable book by a famous dissident.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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The First Circle
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn A
longer book on a similar theme, describing life in a
prison camp (the first circle of hell, as in Dante's
vision of the inferno). For some reason, this seems
to be rather hard to find but I very much enjoyed it.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin A futuristic
novel written soon after the Russian revolution, very
much along the lines of Brave
New World by Aldous Huxley. It describes a bright,
shiny twenty-sixth century, where everything is organised
by the State and people live and love as directed. George
Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four, which is of course also on the same
theme, is much darker. All three are disturbing but
(at least, the way I visualised them) We and Brave New
World are set in clinically clean, capitalist societies,
while 1984 evokes a dirty, grey world where nothing
works properly. All excellent books.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz Smith A gripping
cold-war thriller. Extremely popular in the eighties
but doesn't feel dated now, even though the Soviet Union
is no more. I couldn't put it down!
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Caroline, student at JMJ |
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Trial Run
by Dick Francis A story of cold-war intrigue
told by the prolific Dick Francis.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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In brackets…
If you haven't yet tried Dick Francis, you can find
his books here.
They are light, gripping, mystery stories,
all connected to horse-racing. (If horses are not your
thing, it actually doesn't matter at all. They just
provide the setting.) Trial Run was my first but I have
read several more of Francis's novels and much enjoyed
them. |
Georgie |
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov The famous
novel about a man obsessed with adolescent girls and
his relationship with one of them. Nabokov was living
in America by the time he wrote this but I think it
still counts as Russian literature. Either way, it's
definitely worth reading. Because it was written in
the 1950s, it is certainly not the sordid filth a book
on this subject would be these days. I found it compelling.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Georgie |
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In brackets…
It is interesting to compare and contrast Lolita with
The
Collector by John Fowles (especially in view of
the fact that Nabokov was a butterfly collector).
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| New
Russian literature |
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The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin Akunin is a
contemporary Georgian writer, extremely popular in Russia.
This is the first in a series of racy crime novels set
in the late nineteenth century.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
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The second and third in the
series are:
Turkish
Gambit
Murder
on the Leviathan |
Recommended by: Alexander |
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Generation
by Victor Pelevin This should
actually be Generation P, with the P standing for Pepsi.
A satirical look at life in Russia during perestroika,
very well written.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Val, Russian friend of Alexander and Nelly's |
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Homo Zapiens
by Victor Pelevin A farce about advertising
in post-communist Russia.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon. |
Recommended by: Val |
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to top
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| Films |
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Brother (1997)
Director: Aleksei Balabanov
Actors: Sergei Bodrov Jr., Svetlana Pismichenko
Certificate: 18
Crime thriller set in St Petersburg.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Brother 2 (1999)
Director: Aleksei Balabanov
Actors: Sergei Bodrov Jr., Victor Sukhorukov
Certificate: 18
Sequel, set mainly in Moscow, with an anti-capitalist
message.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Val |
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Russian Ark (2002)
Director: Alexandr Sokurov
Actors: Sergei Dreiden, Lev Yeliseyev
Certificate: U
A quiet film, made
in a single shot. Basically, a tour of the Hermitage
gallery in St Petersburg. Not, perhaps, very exciting,
but definitely interesting.
Click here
to buy this now from Amazon.
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Recommended by: Helen, teacher at JMJ |
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Other
films that our Russian friends have recommended but are
not yet available on amazon.co.uk are:
Piter-FM
The Sunset is Quiet Here
A Good Bath
The Diamond Hand
Ivan Vasilievich Goes Back to the Future (This is available
for Region 1)
Officers
Bumer
and anything by the director E Razanov. I'm
not sure of the English titles but if you find these
films elsewhere you should recognise them. We hope to
be able to include them here soon.
Also, did you know that the Russian actor Vassily Livanov
is widely acknowledged as being the definitive Sherlock
Holmes? To find out more, click here.
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Inspired to learn Russian?
If you live in or near Manchester,
you could start a one-to-one
Russian course with us tomorrow (or whenever you
like).
If you are a complete beginner, you
might like to have a look at our introduction
to the Russian language.
Back to Recommended
Reading
My grateful thanks
for their valuable advice and assistance in the preparation
of this page go to my Russian friends Alexander and
Nelly Sedelnikov.
Georgie
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