Larissa Volokhonsky
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Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel, Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves...
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"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, War's Unwomanly Face is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of stories of women's experiences in World War II, both on the front lines, on the home front, and in occupied territories. This is a new, distinct version of the war we're so familiar with. Alexievich gives voice to women whose stories are lost in the official narratives, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal...
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Crowell critical library volume 0
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Notes from Underground also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld) is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal Epoch in 1864. It is a first-person narrative in the form of a "confession": the work was originally announced by Dostoevsky in Epoch under the title "A Confession".
The novella presents itself as an excerpt from the memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred...
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Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and...
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Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts-one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow-the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane; to the substanceless,...
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"Boris Pasternak's Widely acclaimed novel comes gloriously to life in a magnificent new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhnosky, the award-winning translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and to whom The New York Review of Books declared, "the English-speaking world is indebted." First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy--the novel was banned in the Soviet Union Until 1988, and Pasternak declined the Nobel...
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A monumental new translation--the first in more than twenty years--of Russia's greatest family drama, rendered with all the passion, humor, and soul of the original. Dostoevsky's final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his sons--the eponymous brothers Karamazov--and...
8) The idiot
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Twenty-six-year-old Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to Russia after spending several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by the society of St. Petersburgh for his idiocy, generosity and innocence, he finds himself at the centre of a struggle between a beautiful kept woman and a gorgeous, virtuous girl, both of whom win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's very goodness seems to precipitate disaster, leaving the impression that, in a world...
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"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. These men and women were both witnesses and sometimes soldiers as well, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded in them--a trauma that would forever change the course of the Russian nation. This is a new version of the war we're so familiar with....
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Vintage classics volume 0
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Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and our modern world, and is still known worldwide as the quintessential Russian novel. Readers of all backgrounds have debated its historical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions, probing the moral and ethical dilemmas that Dostoevsky so brilliantly stages throughout his narrative. Yet, at its heart, this...
12) War and peace
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"'...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle'- Leo Tolstoy. Striking a balance between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, this epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. Tolstoy's timeless portrayal...
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"The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the "wicked and sentimental" Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons--the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, its social and spiritual...
14) Demons
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A pair of self-styled revolutionaries and their followers plot to overthrow the Tsar and seize control of the government in Dostoyevsky's compelling tale of ideology and murder in 19th-century Russia. Based on a real-life political assassination, the story unfolds in a fictional town in which Stavrogin, a power-hungry cynic, and Pyotr, a radical willing to go to any lengths for his ideals, take charge of a crew of anarchists, nihilists, and other...
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A new translation of The Possessed and a new title to go with it. The translators claim it better reflects the spirit of what basically is a novel of ideas, the demons of the title being the Western imports of idealism, socialism, materialism, nihilism, atheism and so on.
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"A collection of personal narratives told by those who were children during World War II and survived harrowing experiences. So many children were separated from their loved ones in the midst of the terror and chaos. As a result, some grew up in orphanages or were raised by grandparents or extended family; others were taken in and cared for by strangers who risked punishment for such acts. Still others lived on their own or became underage soldiers...
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Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring their unmatched talents to The Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, a collection of thirty of Chekhov’s best tales from the major periods of his creative life.
Considered the greatest short story writer, Anton Chekhov...
Considered the greatest short story writer, Anton Chekhov...
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"Chekhov's genius left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now, renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their peerless renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories--a full deck! These stories, which span the full arc of his career, reveal the extraordinary variety and unexpectedness of his work, from the farcically comic to the darkly complex, showing that there...
20) Dead souls
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In this comic classic of Russian literature, Chichikov, an amusing and often confused schemer, buys deceased serfs' names from landlords' poll tax lists hoping to mortgage them for profit.