A great list for the pre-Soviet era and a very limited for the Soviet one. It misses so much brilliance! Babel, Platonov, Sholokhov, Pasternak (both as a poet and a novelist), Dovlatov, Yerofeev -- are all sorely missed.
Some time ago I tried to compile the "Great Russian Novels" list. It may be a companion piece to yours; a lot of similarities but a lot of differences as well.
My response with personal thoughts: Sholokhov used to be taught in university classes during my time but he's not that great and an alleged plagiarist. Platonov is INSANE, as in insanely difficult to read (and that was his intention), even in Russian. There's a recent translation of Chevengur which is relatively accessible. Pasternak is okay but Dr Z actually worked better as an MGM film than the book. Babel is a controversial figure but okay, he is translatable. Dovlatov was a family friend. I never got the hype. A little bit Bukowski though not as vulgar by a mile. Yerofeev is not translatable. When he is, it still requires a deep understanding of quotidian Soviet reality.
My mom was in the orbit of NYC Third Wave Russian writers circle of which Dovlatov was the gravitational center. I say in the orbit because she worked mostly as a journalist for Radio Liberty and Новое Русское Слово. I don't remember him very well as I was quite young. I do remember him staying over a number of times when he was too drunk to go back to Queens.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I’m apparently better read in Russian literature than I thought. I have read most of the works you discuss. I found your comments on Dead Souls interesting because I was baffled by the second part of that book. I enjoyed The Overcoat more.Life and Fate is a terrific novel. You might also want to take a look at Grossmans Everything Flows. Heart of a Dog is worthwhile and l quite like The White Guard . On Soviet life, Kolyma Tales gives you quite a harrowing and ultimately numbing portrait of camp life. Another interesting perspective on Soviet life can be found in Venedikt Erofev Moscow to the End of the Line.
Thank for complimenting Constance Garnett , who’s become quite unfashionable.
Did you ever read Andrei Bely’s Petersburg? I’d seen it lauded for years and read it and was thoroughly bored .
Finally , only a little off topic, I want to put in a plug for Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring . It’s English with a Russian setting. It’s a good and in some respects strange novel.
Even further off topic, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower is a better novel about German Romanticism than most of the German ones. It's certainly better than Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar, although I'm nervous of saying anything critical of Thomas Mann within earshot of Liza :)
This is a really well-done and comprehensive guide to Russian Literature, Liza! I knew nothing about Russian literature before reading this and I learned so much! To compliment Liza's guide to Russian Literature, I wanted to recommend some great non-fiction works on Russian history!
* The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes
* Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
* A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes
* Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
* Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
* The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
* Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 by Antony Beevor
* Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution by Richard Abraham
* Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Times by Joseph Frank
* Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett
* 200 Years Together I: The Jews Before the Revolution by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* 200 Years Together II: The Jews in the Soviet Union by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
I would also include Mr. Campbell and Mr. Driver's kind suggestions:
I'm a little disappointed at the dearth of female Russian writers! One of my favorite is
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya...
I am a high school English teacher and I regularly have my students read her short stories. I absolutely love her writing and how it conveys Russian culture.
I should clarify then that Svetlana Alexievich, my suggestion above, was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. She grew up in Belarus and is a Russian-language, but not Russian, writer.
To which point, Nikolai Gogol was Ukrainian, and not only in the sense of his birthplace being in Ukraine. He specifically wrote about Ukrainian (as distinct from Russian) culture, for example in Sorochyntsi Fair.
Nice to see Oblomov on your list. That's a firm favourite of mine.
When you refer to 'grades', it would be useful to give an age as I have no idea what grades mean. You did say you had a "a Russian literature phase at fifteen" -- is *that* 10th grade?
You skimmed over a lot of Silver Age and Soviet writers, which is fine because they're not well known or translated (though some are recently). I would add some lesser known works like The Petty Demon by Sologub (second funniest and most grotesяue novel in Russian Lit after Dead Souls IMO), The Foundation Pit by Platonov (tough read but more accessible than his other books), Envy by Yuri Olesha, We by Zamyatin, 12 Chairs by Ilf and Petrov (not sure how the translations hold up), other novels/novellas by Bulgakov like The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog. I don't think you mentioned Bely and Petersburg which is the Russian Ulysses or Berlin Alexanderplatz and actually relatively accessible compared to the Irish and German counterparts. I could go on much further but most importantly I wouldn't recommend any Anglophone monophones to start with Pushkin because he is the most untranslatable of all, not because he's difficult but because his musicality is entirely lost in translation. Я русский, и я вас прекрасно понимаю; то есть, список в целом отличный, но если вы обращаетесь к англоговорящим людям, которые только начинают знакомиться с русской литературой, я бы не стал утомлять их Пушкиным. Слава богу, вы не упомянули Державина или Фонвизена.
Hey random guy here. I've read all the books you've listed and enjoyed every one. I have three different versions of Bely's Petersburg. Might I also make mention Daniil kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. Both great writers who suffered and died simply being Russian.
Vvedensky was either a protege or imitator Khlebnikov, depending on how you see him. While I have seen some noble attempts at rendering him into English the biggest problem is that it is impossible to get a sense of the medieval cadences, even if his neologisms can be approximated. That's the reason his stuff works - because it functions on a subliminal level like race memory of ancient Slavic speech, verse, and mythology.
For Kharms it's helpful to have at least a passing understanding of early Soviet reality but not necessary.
I enjoy reading this sort of thing. I don't understand everything. But then I don't understand everything when I read Don Quixote, or Ulysses. In fact, it's better for me when I read a book I don't fully understand. Thank you for replying. I think the same names always get thrown out when Russian literature is mentioned. It was nice you mentioned Bely and Sologub. And I enjoy Nikolai Leskov also. Although I only read the translations, I enjoy all sorts of Russian Lit. And also poetry.
Finally looked at the Norton link. I'll need to check it out at one point as I'm very curious how they handled Vvedensky. George Gibian was a highly renowned Slavic scholar so I trust he knew what he was doing.
Fantastic beginners overview! By the way, I am someone who put down Lolita in disgust. No matter the prose, it was not for me.
As for translators, I’m a Garnett girl as well! She keeps the poetry of language in her translations. (And did you know she met Tolstoy and he wanted her to translate his works?) Tolstoy is my absolute favorite.
I did not like White Nights, unfortunately, but I plan to give Dostoyevsky’s other works a chance.
I appreciate that you covered different time periods here. I added a few of these to my to-read list!
Read “Anna Karenina” when I was 24. Loved it. Read “War and Peace” at 70. Liked it a lot. Reading “The Brothers Karamazov” now. (Only 100 pages in.) Loving it!
That's an interesting link. You probably have also see the one below, but I though I'd add it for the community because it further unpacks the treatment of antisemitism in Life and Fate.
Strange list. The whole Silver Age is represented horribly. The Wikipedia article is more comprehensive than this. Naming the Silver Age without even mentioning Symbolism is a crime.
Weirdly, you also only listed Novels from Nabokov that he wrote in English, none of his Russian ones, even though this list is about Russian Literature.
Calling Mandel’štam a purely political author is also a grave misrepresentation.
Bookmarking this fantastic resource—thank you! Reading Anna Karenina at the moment. Was just writing about some of the fathers of Russian classical music, and I’m sure there are many more parallels to explore between their music and books on this list.
A great list for the pre-Soviet era and a very limited for the Soviet one. It misses so much brilliance! Babel, Platonov, Sholokhov, Pasternak (both as a poet and a novelist), Dovlatov, Yerofeev -- are all sorely missed.
Some time ago I tried to compile the "Great Russian Novels" list. It may be a companion piece to yours; a lot of similarities but a lot of differences as well.
https://tapwatersommelier.substack.com/p/the-great-russian-novel
My response with personal thoughts: Sholokhov used to be taught in university classes during my time but he's not that great and an alleged plagiarist. Platonov is INSANE, as in insanely difficult to read (and that was his intention), even in Russian. There's a recent translation of Chevengur which is relatively accessible. Pasternak is okay but Dr Z actually worked better as an MGM film than the book. Babel is a controversial figure but okay, he is translatable. Dovlatov was a family friend. I never got the hype. A little bit Bukowski though not as vulgar by a mile. Yerofeev is not translatable. When he is, it still requires a deep understanding of quotidian Soviet reality.
I don't agree on many points here :) But can you tell more about Dovlatov being a family friend?
My mom was in the orbit of NYC Third Wave Russian writers circle of which Dovlatov was the gravitational center. I say in the orbit because she worked mostly as a journalist for Radio Liberty and Новое Русское Слово. I don't remember him very well as I was quite young. I do remember him staying over a number of times when he was too drunk to go back to Queens.
(deleted a previous comment because I also wanted to share it as a Note)
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I’m apparently better read in Russian literature than I thought. I have read most of the works you discuss. I found your comments on Dead Souls interesting because I was baffled by the second part of that book. I enjoyed The Overcoat more.Life and Fate is a terrific novel. You might also want to take a look at Grossmans Everything Flows. Heart of a Dog is worthwhile and l quite like The White Guard . On Soviet life, Kolyma Tales gives you quite a harrowing and ultimately numbing portrait of camp life. Another interesting perspective on Soviet life can be found in Venedikt Erofev Moscow to the End of the Line.
Thank for complimenting Constance Garnett , who’s become quite unfashionable.
Did you ever read Andrei Bely’s Petersburg? I’d seen it lauded for years and read it and was thoroughly bored .
Finally , only a little off topic, I want to put in a plug for Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring . It’s English with a Russian setting. It’s a good and in some respects strange novel.
Even further off topic, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower is a better novel about German Romanticism than most of the German ones. It's certainly better than Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar, although I'm nervous of saying anything critical of Thomas Mann within earshot of Liza :)
Only thing I like from Mann is Death in Venice.I think I’ve read all of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels.She was very good’
This is a really well-done and comprehensive guide to Russian Literature, Liza! I knew nothing about Russian literature before reading this and I learned so much! To compliment Liza's guide to Russian Literature, I wanted to recommend some great non-fiction works on Russian history!
* The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes
* Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
* A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes
* Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
* Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
* The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
* Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 by Antony Beevor
* Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution by Richard Abraham
* Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Times by Joseph Frank
* Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett
* 200 Years Together I: The Jews Before the Revolution by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* 200 Years Together II: The Jews in the Soviet Union by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
* The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
I would also include Mr. Campbell and Mr. Driver's kind suggestions:
* Black Earth by Andrew Meier
* Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam
* Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Thanks Noah!
It's great to be part of your excellent list.
I'm a little disappointed at the dearth of female Russian writers! One of my favorite is
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya...
I am a high school English teacher and I regularly have my students read her short stories. I absolutely love her writing and how it conveys Russian culture.
Teffi is another great one, be sure to check her out if you haven't already.
(There are also quite a few good Ukrainian female writers, but that's another topic and another list for another time, perhaps)
I should clarify then that Svetlana Alexievich, my suggestion above, was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. She grew up in Belarus and is a Russian-language, but not Russian, writer.
To which point, Nikolai Gogol was Ukrainian, and not only in the sense of his birthplace being in Ukraine. He specifically wrote about Ukrainian (as distinct from Russian) culture, for example in Sorochyntsi Fair.
Nice to see Oblomov on your list. That's a firm favourite of mine.
When you refer to 'grades', it would be useful to give an age as I have no idea what grades mean. You did say you had a "a Russian literature phase at fifteen" -- is *that* 10th grade?
Oblomov
Guess it's time then Liza!
Describing Onegin as the OG situationship is 🤯
I might have to reread it with that lens in mind
You skimmed over a lot of Silver Age and Soviet writers, which is fine because they're not well known or translated (though some are recently). I would add some lesser known works like The Petty Demon by Sologub (second funniest and most grotesяue novel in Russian Lit after Dead Souls IMO), The Foundation Pit by Platonov (tough read but more accessible than his other books), Envy by Yuri Olesha, We by Zamyatin, 12 Chairs by Ilf and Petrov (not sure how the translations hold up), other novels/novellas by Bulgakov like The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog. I don't think you mentioned Bely and Petersburg which is the Russian Ulysses or Berlin Alexanderplatz and actually relatively accessible compared to the Irish and German counterparts. I could go on much further but most importantly I wouldn't recommend any Anglophone monophones to start with Pushkin because he is the most untranslatable of all, not because he's difficult but because his musicality is entirely lost in translation. Я русский, и я вас прекрасно понимаю; то есть, список в целом отличный, но если вы обращаетесь к англоговорящим людям, которые только начинают знакомиться с русской литературой, я бы не стал утомлять их Пушкиным. Слава богу, вы не упомянули Державина или Фонвизена.
Hey random guy here. I've read all the books you've listed and enjoyed every one. I have three different versions of Bely's Petersburg. Might I also make mention Daniil kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. Both great writers who suffered and died simply being Russian.
Harms: yes, absolutely. Vvedensky requires native level fluency and even then is a tough nut to crack.
I have a book with both of them together. It's fragmentary at best. But there are some funny lines. I only do the English version. I have more Kharms.
Vvedensky was either a protege or imitator Khlebnikov, depending on how you see him. While I have seen some noble attempts at rendering him into English the biggest problem is that it is impossible to get a sense of the medieval cadences, even if his neologisms can be approximated. That's the reason his stuff works - because it functions on a subliminal level like race memory of ancient Slavic speech, verse, and mythology.
For Kharms it's helpful to have at least a passing understanding of early Soviet reality but not necessary.
Ah. Interesting. I have a passing understanding. I have read a lot of Russian novels. The copy I have is this :
https://wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393007237-russia-s-lost-literature-of-the-absurd
I enjoy reading this sort of thing. I don't understand everything. But then I don't understand everything when I read Don Quixote, or Ulysses. In fact, it's better for me when I read a book I don't fully understand. Thank you for replying. I think the same names always get thrown out when Russian literature is mentioned. It was nice you mentioned Bely and Sologub. And I enjoy Nikolai Leskov also. Although I only read the translations, I enjoy all sorts of Russian Lit. And also poetry.
Finally looked at the Norton link. I'll need to check it out at one point as I'm very curious how they handled Vvedensky. George Gibian was a highly renowned Slavic scholar so I trust he knew what he was doing.
Isn't Gogol more Ukrainian than Russian? I don't like seeing him grouped with 'Russian literature'.
With Bulgakov, 'White Guard' is great, well worth reading.
Just wondering, maybe you've posted before and I missed it, have you covered Ukrainian literature at all? Have you read any?
But let us stop whipping that dead horse, Raskolnikov.
Fantastic beginners overview! By the way, I am someone who put down Lolita in disgust. No matter the prose, it was not for me.
As for translators, I’m a Garnett girl as well! She keeps the poetry of language in her translations. (And did you know she met Tolstoy and he wanted her to translate his works?) Tolstoy is my absolute favorite.
I did not like White Nights, unfortunately, but I plan to give Dostoyevsky’s other works a chance.
I appreciate that you covered different time periods here. I added a few of these to my to-read list!
Read “Anna Karenina” when I was 24. Loved it. Read “War and Peace” at 70. Liked it a lot. Reading “The Brothers Karamazov” now. (Only 100 pages in.) Loving it!
Douglas Murray consider’s Grossman’s Life and Fate one of the most important works ever written: He writes about Vasily Grossman’s 1959 novel Life and Fate and what he said of antisemitism: “It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of – I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.” https://www.thejc.com/life/douglas-murrays-latest-book-needs-to-be-read-even-by-those-of-us-who-think-we-know-exactly-what-is-going-on-mhu6cs1z
That's an interesting link. You probably have also see the one below, but I though I'd add it for the community because it further unpacks the treatment of antisemitism in Life and Fate.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/no-exit-2
Thank you for posting this. Much appreciated!
Strange list. The whole Silver Age is represented horribly. The Wikipedia article is more comprehensive than this. Naming the Silver Age without even mentioning Symbolism is a crime.
Weirdly, you also only listed Novels from Nabokov that he wrote in English, none of his Russian ones, even though this list is about Russian Literature.
Calling Mandel’štam a purely political author is also a grave misrepresentation.
Bookmarking this fantastic resource—thank you! Reading Anna Karenina at the moment. Was just writing about some of the fathers of Russian classical music, and I’m sure there are many more parallels to explore between their music and books on this list.
Your very first recommendation Eugene Onegin was not translated (?)by the group of translators mentioned.
As poetry the question of translations is even more important,any suggestions?
For Onegin, try the translation of James E. Falen, it's quite good.
For other poetry, e.g., Brodsky, you won't go wrong with Alexandra Berlina's translations. Or his own, honestly.