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Tags: 20th century russian literature

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  The Heart of a Dog

  by Mikhaíl Bulgakov

  This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous , vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in... (more)
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  Kolyma Tales (Twentieth-Century Classics)

  by Varlam Shalamov, John Glad

  It is estimated that some three million people died in the Soviet forced-labour camps of Kolyma, in the northeastern area of Siberia. Shalamov himself spent seventeen years there, and in these stories he vividly captures the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances, whose hopes and plans extended to further than a few hours. This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously... (more)
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  Envy (New York Review Books Classics)

  by Yury Olesha, Marian Schwartz

  Yuri Olesha's novella combines social satire, effervescent humor, and a wild visionary streak in the story of a Soviet Babbitt, a hero of industry who presides over an unheard-of increase in the production of sausage. But beside this man with the unshakable self-regard is the bitter sponger who, consumed with resentment, sees through him.
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  Petty Demon

  by Fyodor Sologub

  The Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels ever written. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main character, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting—at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard. The plot moves from Peredonov’s petty quest for a promotion... (more)
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  The Foundation Pit

  by Andrei Platonovich Platonov

  Translated from the Russian by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson With notes and an afterword by Robert Chandler and Olga Meerson In Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit, a team of workers has been given the job of digging the foundation of an immense edifice, a palatial home for the perfect future that, they are convinced, is at hand. But the harder the team works, the deeper they dig, the... (more)
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  Farewell to Matyora (European Classics)

  by Valentin Rasputin

  Text: English (translation) Original Language: Russian
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  We

  by Yevgeny Zamyatin

  In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, "We" is the classic dystopian novel and was the inspiration for George Orwell's... (more)
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  Red Cavalry and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

  by Isaac Babel

  From the early Soviet period, the impassioned short fiction of the great Russian-Jewish writer One of the most powerful short-story writers of the twentieth century, Isaac Babel expressed his sense of inner conflict through disturbing tales that explored the contradictions of Russian society. Whether reflecting on anti-Semitism in stories such as "Story of My Dovecote" and "First Love," or depicting ... (more)