Recommendations based on "Verses and Versions Three Centuries of Russian Poetry"

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 A "Russian Journal" is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document.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

'although He Feared Death, He Could Not Stop. 'if I Stopped Now, After Coming All This Way - Well, They'd Call Me An Idiot!' A Pair Of Short Stories About Greed, Charity, Life And Death From One Of Russia's Most Influential Writers And Thinkers. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 Books For Penguin's 80th Birthday. Little Black Classics Celebrate The Huge Range And Diversity Of Penguin Classics, With Books From Around The World And Across Many Centuries. They Take Us From A Balloon Ride Over Victorian London To A Garden Of Blossom In Japan, From Tierra Del Fuego To 16th-century California And The Russian Steppe. Here Are Stories Lyrical And Savage; Poems Epic And Intimate; Essays Satirical And Inspirational; And Ideas That Have Shaped The Lives Of Millions. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy's Works Available In Penguin Classics Are Anna Karenina, War And Peace, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,the Cossacks And Other Stories, The Kreutzer Sonata And Other Stories, What Is Art?, Resurrection, The Death Of Ivan Ilyich And Other Stories, Master And Man And Other Stories, How Much Land Does A Man Need? & Other Stories, A Confession And Other Religious Writings And Last Steps: The Late Writings Of Leo Tolstoy.

In its adventurous happenings, its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues, A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and '30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin, the archetypal Russian antihero, Lermontov's novel looks forward to the subsequent glories and passion of Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.

Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862. The controversial portrait of Bazarov, the energetic, cynical, and self-assured `nihilist' who repudiates the romanticism of his elders, shook Russian society. Indeed the image of humanity liberated by science from age-old conformities and prejudices is one that can threaten establishments of any political or religious persuasion, and is especially potent in the modern era. This new translation, specially commissioned for the World's Classics, is the first to draw on Turgenev's working manuscript, which only came to light in 1988. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A tragedy of Shakespearean force and intensity, Dostoyevsky's drama of parricide and family rivalry chronicles the murder of depraved landowner Fyodor Karamazov and the subsequent investigation and trial. Extensive notes explain the many literary and topical allusions and provide background information.

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

Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand - in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev - the life of the ordinary Russian. After his father, a paperhanger and upholsterer, died of cholera, five-year-old Gorky was taken to live with his grandfather, a polecat-faced tyrant who would regularly beat him unconscious, and with his grandmother, a tender mountain of a woman and a wonderful storyteller, who would kneel beside their bed (with Gorky inside it pretending to be asleep) and give God her views on the day's happenings, down to the last fascinating details. She was, in fact, Gorky's closest friend and the epic heroine of a book swarming with characters and with the sensations of a curious and often frightened little boy.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.

Boris Pasternak's widely acclaimed novel comes gloriously to life in a magnificent new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the award-winning translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and to whom, The New York Review of Books declared, "the English-speaking world is indebted." First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy--the novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, and Pasternak declined the Nobel Prize a year later under intense pressure from Soviet authorities--Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times. Stunningly rendered in the spirit of Pasternak's original--resurrecting his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone--and including an introduction, textual annotations, and a translators' note, this edition of Doctor Zhivago is destined to become the definitive English translation of our time.

Goncharov’s detached yet sympathetic portrait of the humdrum life of his ineffectual and slothful hero is a tragicomedy created through painstaking accumulation of seemingly insignificant details alongside a sympathetic analysis of his character.

A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature   The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov's own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.