Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...

"...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle' - Leo Tolstoy Striking a balance between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, this epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. Tolstoy's timeless portrayal...

"Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Children is a masterpiece not only of the nineteenth century but of the whole of Russian literature, a book full to bursting with life. It is a novel about the relations between the young and the old, about love, families, politics, religion, about strong beliefs and heated disagreements, illness and death. It is about the clash between liberals and conservatives, revolutionaries and reactionaries. At the time of its publication...

Ernst Fandorin, a young detective with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Police in 1876, is forced to unravel a complicated web of events when his inquiry into the suicide of a talented student in a public park reveals links to a murder, an orphanage, and a worldwide terrorist conspiracy.

"Vassily Grossman (1905 - 1964) has become well-known in the last twenty years - above all for his novel Life and Fate. This has often been described as a Soviet (or anti-Soviet) War and Peace. Most readers, however, do not realize that it is only the second half of a dilogy. The first half, originally titled Stalingrad but published in 1952 under the title For a just cause, has received surprisingly little attention. Scholars and critics seem to...

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society. But when Yakovlev meets the naive young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto...