Two recently published works of fiction that we liked and wanted to share with you.

This is a short excerpt from the first-ever English translation (by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) of Grossman’s epic novel of the turning point in World War II.

Throughout his long life, Leo Tolstoy had many strange hobbies. One of them was bicycling, which he learned at the ripe age of 67, and which he loved. But that's not to say there weren't some humorous incidents...

There was a time when literary journals ruled Russian intellectual life. That time has passed.

In which an artist tries to get out of a job illustrating a brochure and ends up getting sucked into a Pushkin meme vortex.

“Pushkin is our everything,” Russians like to say. And sometimes it seems like he was everywhere.

An excerpt from the fine new novel Zuleikha, by Guzel Yakhina, about a woman's survival in Siberia exile, inspired by childhood memories of the author's grandmother.

A poem from the new volume Alcestis of the Underworld, by a regular translator of works published by Russian Life Books.

Russia thaws. People have thoughts. Not always good ones.

I can’t imagine a cleverer or more perverse way of presenting “the first political biography” of Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1975) than as if from the conscience-addled Sholokhov’s perspective.

A poem by Maxim Amelin, translated by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher.

W.W. Norton has released a new translation, by Michael Katz, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel. We excerpt here the novel’s opening.