Literature

In this book of illustrated essays, Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, presents a celebration of the human search for truth and beauty through the lenses of science and poetry.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an undisputed classic of contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in 1962, it is the story of a labor-camp inmate as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression.

A glorious retelling of the Russian folktale Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless from Catherynne M. Valente, set in a mysterious version of St. Petersburg during the first half of the 20th century.

One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the cancerous Soviet police state.

In his monumental narrative of the outbreak of the First World War and the ill-fated Russian offensive into East Prussia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has written "a dramatically new interpretation of Russian history" (Nina Krushcheva, The Nation).

Full of pace, effervescence and grotesque comedy, this short novel by Dostoevsky represents an antic mode insufficiently known to English readers, and presented here in the first translation since Constance Garnett’s version of the 1920s.

A stunning new translation of Tolstoy’s immersive, inventive and masterfully ironic account of the Crimean War, and of the profound light that violence shines on human nature.

This star-crossed gay romance is a #1 bestselling TikTok sensation that took readers by storm, made international news, and catalyzed one of Russia’s largest-ever crackdowns on LGBTQ representation.

A poetic and fiercely moving Russian novel of tradition, change, and thwarted desire by an internationally celebrated writer from the Indigenous Nenets community of northern Siberia. 

Arguably the jewel in the crown of Russia’s greatest writer, Yevgeny Onegin is Alexander Pushkin’s sublime masterpiece of love, death, dueling, rivalry, identity and the search for happiness.

A gorgeous collection from cult classic Polish author Bruno Schulz: 15 of the most captivatingly strange and beautiful short stories ever written.

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.