The divide between country and city is a popular trope in Russian fiction (at least […]
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, by Alina Bronsky
All of us have mother issues, to some extent, but I doubt that anyone’s mother […]
The Same Old Story, by Ivan Goncharov
I used to joke that prozac, if invented before 1800, would have wiped out the […]
The Blizzard, by Vladimir Sorokin
Platon Ilich Garin has a mission. He must get a vaccine to Dolgoye to stop […]
The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden
In The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden, creatures and characters from Russian folklore barge […]
Odessa Stories, by Isaac Babel
Russian literature has (deservedly) a reputation for being utterly depressing and heavy—which is why it’s […]
Orphans of the Carnival, by Carol Birch
Carol Birch’s novel, Orphans of the Carnival, follows the short, strange life of nineteenth century performer, […]
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
Several times in Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow, Count Alexander Rostov claims or is declared […]
The Twelve Chairs, by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov
Almost ten years after the Russian Revolution, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobryaninov has put his past as […]
Memories, by Teffi
Most of the leading lights of Russian literature—especially before the Russian Revolution—that most people know […]