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Reading List

Hi all!

Heading into 2019, I compiled a master reading list of all the literature related to Slavic history and culture that I hope to tackle over the next few years. I thought I would share it with you! I’ll keep adding to it, of course, and updating the list as I make my way through.

As you’ll probably be able to tell, I usually end up getting so excited about reading various stories that I somehow find myself in the middle of about six books at the same time. But hey – that’s the fun, right?!

Anyway… here it is!

Russian Classics

  • Ghosts – Ivan Turgenev
  • Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev (DONE)
  • Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (DONE)
  • War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
  • A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov (currently reading)
  • Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol (DONE)
  • Oblomov – Ivan Goncharov
  • What Is to Be Done? – Nikolay Chernyshevsky
  • Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (DONE)
  • The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (DONE)
  • Mother – Maxim Gorky
  • Eugene Onegin – Alexander Pushkin
  • The Gulag Archipelago – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  • Cancer Ward – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (DONE)
  • Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (DONE)
  • Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov (DONE)
  • The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov (DONE)
  • The Village – Ivan Bunin
  • Dry Valley – Ivan Bunin
  • The Life of Arseniev – Ivan Bunin
  • Taras Bulba – Nikolay Gogol
  • Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak (DONE)
  • And Quiet Flows the Don – Mikhail Sholokhov
  • Life and Fate – Vasily Grossman
  • The Funeral Party – Lyudmila Ulitskaya
  • The Minor – Denis Fonvizin
  • Woe from Wit – Alexander Griboyedov (DONE)
  • There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales – Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (currently reading)

Other Russia-Related Novels

  • Anastasia – James B. Lovell
  • The Tsarina’s Daughter – Carolly Erickson
  • The Romanov Sisters – Helen Rappaport
  • Rasputin – Douglas Smith
  • Road to the Stars – Yuri Gagarin
  • Animal Farm – George Orwell (reread with a Russian-focused lens) (DONE)
  • 1984 – George Orwell (reread with a Russian-focused lens) (DONE)

Plays, Poems, Short Stories, and Primary Sources

  • Domostroy (currently reading)
  • Poetry of Pushkin
  • A Sportsman’s Sketches – Turgenev
  • Dark Avenues – Ivan Bunin
  • The Inspector General – Nikolai Gogol
  • Marriage – Nikolai Gogol
  • “The Nose” – Nikolai Gogol
  • “The Overcoat” – Nikolai Gogol (DONE)
  • Short Stories by Anton Chekhov
  • Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (DONE)
  • The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
  • The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (currently reading)

History & Nonfiction

  • Russia: The Once and Future Empire from Pre-History to Putin – Philip Longworth (DONE)
  • Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89 – Rodric Braithwaite
  • The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union – Serhii Plokhy
  • The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History – Jane Ellis
  • To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Express, the World’s Greatest Railroad – Christian Wolmar
  • Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia – Honey Luard
  • Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime – James O. Finkenauer (DONE)
  • Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret Society – Mark Lawrence Schrad (DONE)
  • A History of Vodka – William Pokhlebin
  • The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia – Masha Gessen (DONE)

Non-Russian (classics, novels, non-fiction, etc.)

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (DONE)
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (DONE)
  • Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (DONE)
  • Hard Times by Charles Dickens (DONE)
  • A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (DONE)
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (DONE)
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (DONE)
  • Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton (DONE)
  • Grit by Angela Duckworth (DONE)
  • Bel Canto by Anne Patchett (DONE)
  • Don Quijote de la Mancha by Cervantes
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (DONE)
  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (DONE)
  • Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (DONE)
  • Native Son by Richard Wright (DONE)

Please send along recommendations, and let me know what you think!