With relatable narrations and characters, these are a wonderful read
A vast is the treasure trove of English literature, vast is the well of Russian literature that is captivating like any other story. Though set in a different time and surroundings unknown to many, yet the narrations and characterization are relatable as a heartbeat. A reader doesn’t have to work very hard to get the references and understand the relationships. With familiar aspects of life woven through words, Russian literature has long been one of the richest and most interesting branches of literature. With incredible narrations, Russian literature has produced some fantastic novels for two centuries and in fact, continues to do so.
As a result, the list of must-read Russian literature includes plenty of the classics from the 19th to the 20th and the 21st century that is a must-read. So here is presenting a list of Russian classics you can pick on next.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky This novel is the author’s personal account translated into a story. This novel was written after Dostoevsky’s own ten-year exile in Siberia. After hammering to death the elderly neighbourhood money-lender and her half-sister with an ax to fleeing the scene of the crime and going undetected, the story picks up with salvation coming to the protagonist in an encounter with the prostitute Sonya. But soon a detective Porfiry arrives on the scene and is running around with the intent of pinning the murders on someone.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak This novel was censored by the then USSR but somehow the manuscript was smuggled into Italy where it was published in 1957. And the following year Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This novel is more than just the love story of Lara and Yuri Zhivago, and talks about what it really means to put your nation before yourself, and before others.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov After several hurdles, the author was able to finish writing this novel in 1940, 12 years after he began writing it. The novel is now hailed as a classic of Russian and 20th-century literature. The story givens with Satan arriving in 1930s Moscow and brings with him a league of misfits including his mistress, the witch Hella and a black cat with a taste for vodka. The story picks up with the three adamant about terrorising the city and goes on to announce their visit in thunderous ways.
A few other novels are And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
