Russian Classics: Ten Novels from the Empire

The Russian novel arrives late and all at once. Gogol’s Dead Souls, published in 1842, is the first of the great comic-prose works; by 1862 Turgenev had made the generational argument explicit and by 1866 Dostoevsky had turned it into a murder. Tolstoy’s two long novels bracket the period at its end.

The shelf is smaller than it looks: only four authors are represented, and Dostoevsky alone accounts for five of the nine books. Tolstoy supplies two more, and Gogol and Turgenev one each, which is enough to see the argument they were having with one another about what Russia was becoming.

Every Russian title on this shelf

Nine titles, oldest first, from 1842 to 1880 and about 2.1 million words.

YearTitleAuthorFormWordsReading time
1842Dead SoulsNikolai GogolNovel141,0008 h
1848White NightsFyodor DostoevskyNovel118,5267 h
1862Fathers and ChildrenIvan TurgenevNovel71,0004 h
1864Notes from the UndergroundFyodor DostoevskyNovel44,1612 h
1866Crime and PunishmentFyodor DostoevskyNovel204,00011 h
1869The IdiotFyodor DostoevskyNovel244,60414 h
1869War and PeaceLeo TolstoyNovel562,00031 h
1878Anna KareninaLeo TolstoyNovel349,00019 h
1880The Brothers KaramazovFyodor DostoevskyNovel349,00019 h

How this list was made

Titles are listed when the author’s country of citizenship, taken from Wikidata, is the Russian Empire. Authors who moved between empires are placed by their first recorded citizenship, so Conrad sits on the British shelf.

Translations differ, and so do word counts: the texts here are particular English versions, and a different translator would shift the totals by a few percent. Reading times use 300 words a minute.

The nine novels span 1842 to 1880 and 2,083,291 words, by four authors: Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The two Tolstoys alone account for 911,000 words, close to half the shelf, and Notes from the Underground at 44,161 words is the shortest — the one to try first if the size of the others is the obstacle.

Questions readers ask

Where should I start with Russian literature?
Fathers and Children, at about 65,000 words: a compact generational argument, and the book that gave the word nihilism its modern use in fiction.
Why is there no Chekhov novel?
Because Chekhov wrote stories and plays rather than novels, and his stories are on the short-story shelf. This list is organised by book, not by author.
Are these the Constance Garnett translations?
Not all. Each book page names its translator, and the site prefers the edition that is complete and freely licensed.

Part of all themed reading lists. Nearby shelves: French Classics · American Classics · Irish Classics · authors A–Z · word counts and reading times.