Russian Classics

A bored Petersburg dandy rejects a country girl's love, only to fall desperately for her years later when it is too late. Pushkin's verse novel set the pattern for the great Russian theme: the destruction wrought by wasted feeling.

A charismatic, cynical Russian officer leaves a trail of broken lives across the Caucasus. Lermontov's fragmented portrait of Pechorin created the archetype of the superfluous man — brilliant, restless, and incapable of happiness.

A smooth-talking schemer travels the Russian provinces buying up the ownership rights of dead serfs for a fraudulent scheme. Gogol's comic masterpiece is a road trip through the absurdity, corruption, and strange beauty of Russian life.

A young nihilist returns to the Russian countryside and clashes with his father's generation over everything — art, science, love, and the meaning of progress. Turgenev coined the term nihilism and gave it its most compelling spokesman.

A destitute student commits murder, convinced his intellect places him above moral law. What follows is a suffocating psychological unravelling as guilt and paranoia consume him. Dostoyevsky's masterwork on conscience, redemption, and the cost of ideology.

A married aristocrat's passionate affair with a dashing officer leads her into social exile and psychological torment, while a landowner searches for meaning in work and family. Tolstoy orchestrates private lives into the most complete portrait of a society ever written.

An aristocratic family returns to their country estate knowing it must be sold to pay debts, yet none of them can act to save it. Chekhov's final play captures the comedy and tragedy of people who cannot change even when their world already has.

A factory widow is radicalised by her son's involvement in the revolutionary movement and discovers a courage she never knew she possessed. Gorky's novel became a foundational text of socialist literature and a portrait of political awakening.