Recommendations based on "A Gentle Creature and Other Stories White Nights; A Gentle Creature; The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"

From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotelWith his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late 1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. Readers and critics were enchanted; as NPR commented, “Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.”A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.Brimming with humour, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the "New York Herald Tribune". This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. A "Russian Journal" is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpses of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle.

Of all Russian writers, Chekhov is one of the best liked and most easily appreciated. Yet he is also one of the most elusive. Here Donald Rayfield reveals the layers of meaning on which the great dramatist's stories and plays are built. He examines his brief twenty-year creative life, from medical student supplementing his income by writing comic stories to his rapid rise as the father of twentieth-century drama and narrative prose. Understanding Chekhov is enriched by revelations from previously unexplored archival material, which deepen our understanding of Chekhov's sources, preoccupations, philosophy, and his relations with theater, with fellow writers, and with contemporary ideas.

The text of The Brothers Karamazov is removed from English-speaking readers today not only by time but also by linguistic and cultural boundaries. Victor Terras’s companion work provides readers with a richer understanding of the Dostoevsky novel as the expression of a philosophy and a work of art.In his introduction, Terras outlines the genesis, main ideas, and structural peculiarities of the novel as well as Dostoevsky’s political, philosophical, and aesthetic stance. The detailed commentary takes the reader through the novel, clarifying aspects of Russian life, the novel’s sociopolitical background, and a number of polemic issues. Terras identifies and explains hundreds of literary and biblical quotations and allusions. He discusses symbols, recurrent images, and structural stylistic patterns, including those lost in English translation.

The first state in history to be based explicitly on atheism, the Soviet Union endowed itself with the attributes of God. In this book, David Satter shows through individual stories what it meant to construct an entire state on the basis of a false idea, how people were forced to act out this fictitious reality, and the tragic human cost of the Soviet attempt to remake reality by force.“I had almost given up hope that any American could depict the true face of Russia and Soviet rule. In David Satter’s Age of Delirium, the world has received a chronicle of the calvary of the Russian people under communism that will last for generations.”―Vladimir Voinovich, author of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin“Spellbinding. . . . Gives one a visceral feel for what it was like to be trapped by the communist system.”―Jack Matlock, Washington Post“Satter deserves our gratitude. . . . He is an astute observer of people, with an eye for essential detail and for human behavior in a universe wholly different from his own experience in America.”―Walter Laqueur, Wall Street Journal“Every page of this splendid and eloquent and impassioned book reflects an extraordinarily acute understanding of the Soviet system.”―Jacob Heilbrunn, Washington Times

Review ‘A dazzling display of Russian magical realism’Daily Mail‘I first encountered VITA NOSTRA in 2009, and then, as now, I was stunned by what I read – not just by the story, which was a revelation to me in itself, but also by the vividness and fluency and power of Hersey's translation. VITA NOSTRA has become a powerful influence on my own writing. It's a book that has the potential to become a modern classic of its genre, and I couldn’t b

Kievan Russia was originally published in a clothbound edition in 1948 as volume two in George Vernadsky’s comprehensive series, A History of Russia. It is now available for the first time in a paperbound edition. At the time of its publication Kievan Russia received the following reviews:“The account of this little-know chapter of Russian history is based on a formidable mass of Slavic Byzantine, Germanic, and Oriental (notably Arabic and Persian_ sources. Much of this material is new, and the thorough utilization of all primary and secondary literature accumulated since Kluchevsky wrote his great history easily makes this volume the definitive study of the Kievan period in the English language. There is hardly an aspect of the life of Russia at that time which remains untouched, and the scope of the author’s interests and erudition is indeed impressive….When all is said, Vernadsky’s filling a definite gap in American historical literature.”―The Annals“This volume is an outstanding contribution to the understanding of an important period of Russian history. It is bound to have a marked influence on Western opinion about the years in Russian history it treats in such masterly manner.”―American Historical Review“If Professor Vernadsky has not written the definitive work on Kievan Russia, no such book could be written without being indebted to Professor Vernadsky’s encyclopedic erudition.”―American Historical ReviewGeorge Vernadsky is professor emeritus of Russian history at Yale University and the author of numerous books on Russian history.

Describes individual escapes and attempted escapes from Stalin's camps, a disciplined, sustained resistance put down with tanks after forty days, and the forced removal and extermination of millions of peasants

Although less famous than Mikhail Bulgakov's comic hit, The Master and Margarita, The White Guard is still an engrossing book, though completely different in tone. It is set in Kiev during the Russian revolution and tells the story of the Turbin family and the war's effect on the middle-classes (not workers).The story was not seen as politically correct, and thereby contributed to Bulgakov's lifelong troubles with the Soviet authorities. It was, however, a well-loved book, and the novel was turned into a successful play at the time of its publication in 1967.

The Devil comes to Moscow; but he isn't all bad. Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.