The Greatest Books Since 1900 Written by Russian Authors
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1 . Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle aged Humbert Humbert, becomes obsessed and se...
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2 . The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature. His career as a dram...
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3 . Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The novel is presented as a poem titled "Pale Fire" with commentary by a friend of the poet's. Together these elements form two story lines in which both authors are central characters. The int...
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4 . The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita (Russian: Ма́стер и Маргари́та) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consi...
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5 . Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago is a 20th century novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a medical doctor and poet. It tells the story of a man to...
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6 . Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand's epochal novel, first published in 1957, has been a bestseller for more than four decades as well as an intellectual landmark. It is the story of a man who said that he would stop the mot...
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7 . The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The book follows hi...
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8 . Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Three Sisters (Russian: Три сeстры, translit. Tri sestry) is a play by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters.[1] I...
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9 . One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary ...
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10 . We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Translated by Natasha Randall Foreword by Bruce Sterling Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes t...
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12 . Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969. Ada began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letter...
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13 . Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the 'cancerous' Sovie...
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14 . First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
At the height of Stalin's postwar terror, Innokenty, a young diplomat and scion of a corrupt ruling class, discovers an earlier and more spiritual tradition than that adopted by the October Revolut...
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15 . The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form-in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway-but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. ...
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16 . The Artamonov Business by Maksim Gorky
The Artamonov Business (Russian: Дело Артамоновых, romanized: Delo Artamonovykh) is a 1941 Soviet drama film directed by Grigori Roshal.
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17 . The Clay Machine-gun by Viktor Pelevin
An intellectually dazzling and hilarious fantasy about identity and Russian history, and a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosphy, The Clay Machine-Gun confirms Victor Pelevin as 'one of the...
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18 . Mother by Maksim Gorky
Mother (Russian: Мать) is a novel written by Maxim Gorky in 1906 about revolutionary factory workers. It was first published, in English, in Appleton's Magazine in 1906, then in Russian in 1907. T...
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19 . Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin
Summer in Baden-Baden (Лето в Бадене) is a book by a Soviet Jewish writer Leonid Tsypkin. It was written in the period from 1977 to 1981, but published in English in 2001 nearly 20 years after his...
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20 . Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin (Russian pronunciation: [pnʲin]) is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of Pnin in the United States launched Nabokov's caree...
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21 . The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the invest...
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22 . The Life of Insects by Victor Pelevin
Set in a crumbling Soviet Black Sea resort, The Life of Insects with its motley cast of characters who exist simultaneously as human beings (racketeers, mystics, drug addicts and prostitutes) and a...
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23 . Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Yerofeev
Moscow-Petushki, also published as Moscow to the End of the Line, Moscow Stations, and Moscow Circles, is a pseudo-autobiographical postmodernist prose poem by Russian writer and satirist Venedikt ...
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24 . Requiem by Anna Akhmatova
Requiem is an elegy by Anna Akhmatova about suffering of people under the Great Purge. It was written over three decades, between 1935 and 1961. She carried it with her, redrafting, as she worked a...
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25 . The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." -- John Updike The Real Life of Sebastian Knight is a perversely magical literary detective story -- subtle, intrica...
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26 . August 1914 by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit︠s︡yn
Expanded by Solzhenitsyn to almost twice the length of the original edition, this novel reconstructs the assassination of tsarist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolupin and the outbreak of the First World War.
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27 . The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native Russian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literary career. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the work...
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28 . The Burn: A Novel in Three Books : (late Sixties--early Seventies) by Vassily Aksyonov
Recounts the experiences of Aristarkh Apollinarievich Kunitser, a young scientist living in Moscow during the sixties, who faces the prospect of exile
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29 . Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
A book judged so dangerous in the Soviet Union that not only the manuscript but the ribbons on which it had been typed were confiscated by the state, Life and Fate is an epic tale of World War II a...
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30 . Petersburg by Andrei Bely
Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translat...
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31 . The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s an...
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32 . The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky by Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky continues to be regarded as the greatest literary representative of revolutionary Russia. Born of the people, and having experienced in his own person their sufferings and their misery,...
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