Recommendations based on "The Possessed Adventures with Russion Books and the People Who Read Them"

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 A "Russian Journal" is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document.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.

Prose writings from one of Russia's greatest poetsThese stories are wonderful in their purity of form, humor, and understatement. This collection also contains a selection of other Pushkin writings, including the fragment Roslavlev, Egyptian Nights, and the autobiographical Journey to Arzrum.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero.

A vivid and compelling account of the final thirteen days of the Romanovs, counting down to the last, tense hours of their lives. On 4 July 1918, a new commandant took control of a closely guarded house in the Russian town of Ekaterinburg. His name was Yakov Yurovsky, and his prisoners were the Imperial family- the former Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey. Thirteen days later, at Yurovsky's command, and on direct orders from Moscow, the family was gunned down in a blaze of bullets in a basement room. This is the story of those murders, which ended 300 years of Romanov rule and began an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s harrowing, semi-autobiographical novel about the internal transformation of a man serving ten years in a remote Siberian prison“In order to understand the significance of the style and structure of the book, it is necessary to bear in mind that it was the result of a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal. . . . The point about the novel, however, is that it charts the reawakening of a man without a personality.”—from the Introduction Here was the house of the living dead, and a life like none other upon earth. In January 1850, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. The four years he spent there, startlingly re-created in The House of the Dead, were the most agonizing of his life. In this fictionalized account he recounts his soul-destroying incarceration through the cool, detached tones of his narrator, Aleksandr Petrovich Goryanchikov: the daily battle for survival, the wooden plank beds, the cabbage soup swimming with cockroaches, his strange ‘family’ of boastful, ugly, cruel convicts. Yet The House of the Dead is far more than a work of documentary realism: it is also a powerful novel of redemption, describing one man’s spiritual and moral death and the miracle of his gradual reawakening.This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by David McDuff discussing the circumstances of Dostoyevsky’s imprisonment, the origins of the novel in his prison writings, and the character of Aleksandr Petrovich.

The last Tsaritsa of Russia, Alexandra Fyodorovna, was murdered with her family on the night of 16-17 July 1918 by agents acting on behalf of the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The dramatic story of the demise of the Romanov dynasty has been recounted many times and has captivated the imagination of generations of readers throughout the world. The recently declassified 1918 diary of Alexandra - published here for the first time in its entirety - provides something no other account could do: a glimpse of the Tsaritsa's thoughts and activities from 1 January 1918 until the night of her death. As the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra wrote in English, though her native language was German and she became fluent in Russian after her marriage to Nicholas. The 1918 diary takes us into her private world, revealing the care she lavished on her children during this period of revolutionary turmoil, how she felt toward her husband, Tsar Nicholas, and what she imagined about the profound struggle - between past and present, old and new worlds, the sacred and the profane - then occurring over the destiny of Russia. The diary reveals that even in her most intimate reflections, she remained the representative of a great system of belief that had prevailed for hundreds of years in Russia and that she and Nicholas hoped to perpetuate. We see in painful detail the tragic daily confrontation between this system of belief and the reality of the modern world that had, in every sense, broken free of her and Nicholas's control.

Anecdotes about Balakirev -- Tales of the ancient Poshekhonians / Vasily Berezaisky -- The merry old fellow / Teller of old Moscow tales -- The ancient and modern divinatory oracle / Martin Zadek -- Guak, or unbounded devotion: a knightly tale -- The tale of Vanka Kain -- The new Sterne / A.A. Shakhovskoi -- Traditional songs (late 18th century) -- Ermak Timofeich / Nikolai Polevoi -- Filatka and Miroshka the rivals / Pavel Grigoriev, Jr. -- Ivan Vyzhigin / Faddei Bulgarin -- The little humpbacked horse / Petr Ershov -- The history of Russia told for children / Aleksandra Ishimova -- The battle of the Russians with the Kabardinians / Nikolai Zriakhov -- Etiquette manuals (1849-1911) --Street types -- God save the Tsar / Aleksei Lvov -- Dark eyes / Evgeny Grebenka -- The great Moscow fire / N. Sokolov -- Elegy (Khas-Bulat) / Aleksandr Ammosov and O. Kh. Agrenova-Slavianskaia -- Balagan advertisements / Malafeev Theater (1883) -- The slums of Petersburg / Vsevolod Krestovsky -- How the Russian gave it hot to a German -- Oh those Yaroslavites, what a fine folk / Fedor Ivanich Kuz'ma -- The slums of the female heart -- Correspondence from the Russo-Turkish War / Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko -- War stories from the present-day war with the Turks / M. Evstigneev -- Where is it better? / L.A. Tikhomirov -- A flask of hooch -- Gypsy romances -- Scenes from a third-class car / B.S. Borisov and V.A. Kriger -- Sarah Bernhardt / M.L. Lentovsky -- The queen of diamonds / V.P. Valentinov -- Anecdotes (1840-1917) -- Moscow court reporting / The Moscow Sheet (Early 1880s) -- The terrible wedding night / Aleksei Pazukhin -- The terrible bandit Churkin -- Where the oranges ripen / N.A. Leikin -- Messrs. Businessmen / I.I. Miasnitsky -- The diary of Maria Bashkirtseva -- Ivanov Pavel / V.M. Doroshevich -- Song of the stormy Petrel / Maxim Gorky -- Light-fingered Sonya / M.D. Klefortov -- Revolutionary songs (late 19th century) -- Vaudeville skits (1905-1910) -- Why was I born into this world / Tobolsk prison song -- The poor fellow died / Konstantin Romanov -- Marusia poisoned herself -- Russian sob sister / Olga Gridina -- How the lasses burned a lad in the stove / Al. Aleksandrovsky -- The wrath of God / V.I. Kryzhandrovskaia -- The little Siberian girl (Sibirochka) / Lidiia Charskaia -- The African princess (Vampuka) / M.N. Volkonsky -- Gladiators of our time / N.N. Breshko-Breshkovsky -- Sanin / Mikhail Artsybashev -- The keys of happiness / Anastasia Verbitskaia -- The vanquished / Count Amori -- Do you remember? / Petr Chardynin -- The wrath of Dionytsus / E.A. Nagrodskaia -- The Countess-actress / Count Amori -- The bloody Talisman / Nat Pinkerton, King of detectives -- The headlands of Manchuria -- The heroic feat of the Don Cossack Kuzma Firsovich Kriuchkov -- Jackals / Sergei Sokolsky -- Rasputin's nighttime orgies / V.V. Ramazanov

The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit. With his disorderly band of accomplices - including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat - he immediately begins to create havoc. Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos. Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try a little black magic of her own to save the man she loves - A masterpiece of magical surrealism, a triumph of the imagination Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Century.