The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the...

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for...

In order to repay a small debt, the young student Mitya is persuaded by a friend to falsify a bank bond and cash it in. Little...

Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Caucasian struggle against the Russians, defects from...

The pioneer of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin has exerted – through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, his plays,...

Combining psychological detail with a strong sense of place and time, this tale bears all the hallmarks of Chekhov's genius, and...

Coming back to the "nest" of his family home in Russia after years of fruitless endeavours away from his roots, Lavretsky decides...

The judge Ivan Ilyich Golovin has spent his life in the pursuit of wealth and status, devoting himself obsessively to work and...

Constantly rebuffed from the social circles he aspires to frequent, the timid clerk Golyadkin is confronted by the sudden...

A mysterious stranger named Chichikov arrives in a small provincial Russian town and proceeds to visit a succession of...

This collection of lesser-known early short fiction - ranging from absurd humorous sketches to psychological dramas and tragic...

On a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one...

Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying-clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka,...

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western...

On the eve of the Crimean War, the young, headstrong Yelena, the daughter of aristocratic Russian parents, falls in love with a...

Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of...

The career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of Master and Margarita - now regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century...

Ivan Bunin's first published work, The Village is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at...

Shakespeare's Sonnets are among the most lyrical and moving pieces of poetry in any language, abounding with examples of his...

On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading...

Since it was first published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s seminal novel has generated countless print, stage and screen adaptations,...

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the...

In a series of nine letters, the narrator tells his friend how he introduced Vera Nikolayevna, a married woman who had been...

Purporting to be an autobiography of the antihero Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne’s novel is a comic masterpiece of digression,...

A secret terrorist group infiltrates the household of a government official’s son, with a view to spying on the father and,...

On a cold morning, at daybreak, the 304th New York Regiment is waiting to engage with the Confederate army. Among the soldiers is...

Frank Aldersley becomes engaged to Clara Burnham on the eve of his departure on a journey to discover the Northwest Passage....

The well-educated daughter of a penniless clergyman, Agnes Grey is treated like a child by her family and so sets out to prove...

Sense and Sensibility is the story of the two Dashwood sisters, who embody the conflict between the oppressive nature of...

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most cherished love stories in English literature, delighting generations of readers with its...