To selfie or not to selfie? That is the question, or at least one of the questions, addressed this week.

Today is the 190th anniversary of the great writer's birth. We thought we would share a few readings to get you in a Tolstoyan spirit.

We review books of fiction (Chekhov, Remizov, the Brothers Strugatsky, and Anderson) and an enticing cookbook.

In which we review a novel about Bulgakov and his love, Margarita (Mikhail and Margarita, by Julie Himes); Soviet Salvage, by Catherine Walworth; and The House of Government, by Yuri Slezkine.

In which we review Amy Knight's Orders to Kill, Linor Goralik's Found Life, a new translation of Monday Starts on Saturday, and the new novel Gogol's Head.

In which we review three books and a DVD we like. See the book reviews section for detailed reviews.

Galina Sergeyevna Usova is a poet and translator of English prose and poetry. For the last few years, she has been standing outside St. Petersburg’s Polytechnic Institute metro station selling her books.

In which we review a mystery, a Gulag guard's memoir, a parable of the avant-garde, and a collection of Valentin Rasputin's prose.

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.

Reading is communication from writer to reader, and yet in Anna Karenina, whenever a character reads, he or she is often only somebody holding a prop, not reading at all.

Known as a female Chekhov and skilled at painting the human condition as hilarious and hideous in one stroke, Teffi is a little-known author you should get to know. 

Where better to begin a literary tour of Moscow than at Mikhail Bulgakov’s notoriously bad apartment, which had an important cameo in his most famous work.