Literature

In 1945 Isaiah Berlin met Anna Akhmatova almost by chance in what was then Leningrad. The brief time they spent together one long November evening was a transformng experience for both, and has become a cardinal moment in modern literary history.

The early years of Bolshevik rule were marked by dynamic interaction between Russia and the West. These years of civil war in Russia were years when the West strove to understand the new communist regime while also seeking to undermine it.

A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago – from the victim’s point of view. It’s a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man.

In a fabulous translation by Anthony Briggs, The Queen of Spades and Selected Works offers the most comprehensive overview of Pushkin’s mastery of the written word.

Universally acknowledged as Russia’s greatest poet, Pushkin wrote with the rich, prolific creative powers of a Mozart or a Shakespeare.

Osip Mandelstam visited Armenia in 1930, and during the eight months of his stay, he rediscovered his poetic voice and was inspired to write an experimental meditation on the country and its ancient culture.

The first novel by the celebrated Russian master Gaito Gazdanov, An Evening with Claire is a lyrical, finely crafted portrait of a lost innocence and a vanished era.

Boris Godunov, Little Tragedies and Others

The Cold War and the Golden Age of Hollywood meet in this story of the remarkable career of Boris Morros, film producer and Russian double agent.

Explore Fyodor Dostoevsky's world in the Greatest Stories of Dostoevsky, a captivating collection of timeless tales delving into human complexities.

In Molotov’s Magic Lantern, Polonsky visits the haunted cities and vivid landscapes of the books from Molotov’s library: works by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Akhmatova, and others, some of whom were sent to the Gulag by the very man who collected their

Jumping between the diaries of Jacob Ossetsky in Kiev in the early 1900s and his granddaughter's experiences in the theatrical world of Moscow in the 1970s, the reader is guided through some of the most turbulent times in the history of Russia and Ukraine