Skip to main content
Canon Compass
All languages
Browse by Language
21 books

Russian

Explore 21 works originally written in Russian, led by Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

Entry Point

Start with Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, ranked #10 in the Canon Compass list.

#10
Cover of Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

4.5 out of 5 stars(2.3K)

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: Anna's tragic affair with Count Vronsky and Levin's search for meaning. Russian literature masterpiece - summary and where to buy.

Russian Soul
Love & Loss
#11
Cover of Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.6 out of 5 stars(5.7K)

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment: Raskolnikov commits murder and faces Porfiry in this psychological thriller. Summary, analysis, and where to buy.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#14
Cover of War and Peace

War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

4.6 out of 5 stars(2.1K)

Tolstoy's War and Peace: Pierre, Natasha, and Prince Andrei during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Epic literature - summary, characters, and where to buy.

Russian Soul
Epics
#19
Cover of The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.7 out of 5 stars(4.4K)

Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov: Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha debate God and morality. The Grand Inquisitor chapter - summary, analysis, and where to buy.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#34
Cover of The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

4.5 out of 5 stars(4.5K)

Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: Satan visits Soviet Moscow. Pontius Pilate, Woland, and love in this classic - summary and where to buy.

Magical Realism
Society & Satire
#56
Cover of The Idiot

The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.5 out of 5 stars(3.4K)

Dostoevsky's The Idiot: Prince Myshkin's radical goodness collides with a corrupt St. Petersburg society. A tragic study of innocence destroyed.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#95
Cover of Demons

Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.7 out of 5 stars(1.2K)

Dostoevsky's Demons: nihilist revolutionaries tear a Russian town apart in this prophetic novel of ideology, terror, and moral collapse.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#104
Cover of Dead Souls

Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

4.2 out of 5 stars(924)

Gogol's Dead Souls: a swindler buys dead serfs across provincial Russia. A darkly comic masterpiece of satire, absurdity, and the Russian soul.

Russian Soul
Society & Satire
#107
Cover of Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak

4.4 out of 5 stars(1.3K)

Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago: love and poetry against the storm of the Russian Revolution. Summary, analysis, and where to buy.

Russian Soul
Love & Loss
#121
Cover of The Stories of Anton Chekhov

The Stories of Anton Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

4.6 out of 5 stars(694)

Chekhov's collected stories: the quiet dramas of ordinary Russian lives that revolutionized the short story form. Essential reading for all fiction lovers.

Russian Soul
Love & Loss
#140
Cover of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

4.6 out of 5 stars(5.6K)

Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: survival and dignity in a Soviet labor camp. The novel that exposed the Gulag to the world.

Russian Soul
#168
Cover of Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Turgenev

4.4 out of 5 stars(1.5K)

Turgenev's Fathers and Sons: the novel that gave the world nihilism. Generational conflict in nineteenth-century Russia.

Russian Soul
Society & Satire
#194
Cover of Oblomov

Oblomov

by Ivan Goncharov

4.3 out of 5 stars(482)

Goncharov's Oblomov: a Russian nobleman who cannot get off his couch. A devastating, tender portrait of inertia and the unlived life.

Russian Soul
Society & Satire
#195
Cover of The Gulag Archipelago

The Gulag Archipelago

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

4.7 out of 5 stars(5.4K)

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago: a devastating account of Soviet forced labor camps. Memoir, history, and moral testimony from the heart of the system.

Philosophy & Faith
Russian Soul
#235
Cover of A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time

by Mikhail Lermontov

4.3 out of 5 stars(769)

Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time: Pechorin, Russia's first anti-hero, in a fractured portrait of brilliance, boredom, and self-destruction.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#236
Cover of Life and Fate

Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

4.7 out of 5 stars(2.6K)

Grossman's Life and Fate: a Stalingrad epic confronting Nazi and Soviet tyranny. The twentieth century's War and Peace.

Russian Soul
Epics
#312
Cover of We

We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

4.1 out of 5 stars(5K)

Discover Zamyatin's We -- the pioneering dystopian novel that inspired Orwell and Huxley with its vision of a mathematically perfect totalitarian state.

Speculative Futures
Russian Soul
#342
Cover of The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

by Leo Tolstoy

4.4 out of 5 stars(3.3K)

Tolstoy's searing novella follows a conventional man confronting the emptiness of his life as death approaches.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#347
Cover of Notes from the Underground

Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.6 out of 5 stars(2.9K)

Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground: the bitter, brilliant monologue that launched existentialist fiction.

Russian Soul
Philosophy & Faith
#358
Cover of Kolyma Stories

Kolyma Stories

by Varlam Shalamov

4.7 out of 5 stars(188)

Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Stories: devastating short fiction from the Soviet Gulag, a masterwork of literary testimony and survival.

Russian Soul
Gothic & Dark
#383
Cover of Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

4.6 out of 5 stars(602)

Pushkin's dazzling novel in verse—a tale of love, regret, and Russian society that launched a literary tradition.

Russian Soul
Love & Loss

Complete Russian Index

  1. #10Anna Karenina
  2. #11Crime and Punishment
  3. #14War and Peace
  4. #19The Brothers Karamazov
  5. #34The Master and Margarita
  6. #56The Idiot
  7. #95Demons
  8. #104Dead Souls
  9. #107Doctor Zhivago
  10. #121The Stories of Anton Chekhov
  11. #140One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  12. #168Fathers and Sons
  13. #194Oblomov
  14. #195The Gulag Archipelago
  15. #235A Hero of Our Time
  16. #236Life and Fate
  17. #312We
  18. #342The Death of Ivan Ilyich
  19. #347Notes from the Underground
  20. #358Kolyma Stories
  21. #383Eugene Onegin