Literature

Today is Chekhov's birthday (he's 156). We celebrate by kicking of several months of Daily Chekhov quotes, and share a few other things...

On Monday, January 18, a new BBC six-part miniseries of Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace comes to American television. Here's your crib sheet.

The classic work of Russian journalism, Moscow and Muscovites, by journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky (translated by Brendan Kiernan), received the prestigious 2015 AATSEEL Award for Best Scholarly Translation into English.

Under Stalin, a poem could mean life or death. For many poets, it was a one-way ticket to the Gulag. Today, poems can be a means to face cultural memories of arrests in the night, forced labor, and the silence demanded of people fearing those fates. 

On the anniversary of the birth of an extremely talented, headstrong poet who was taken from us too soon.

As a metal, Silver means second place; as a period of poetic production in Russia, the Silver Age is unparalleled. The years 1890-1925 (give or take) stand out for the explosion of poetic voices, forms, and innovations. With help from the recently published Russian Silver Age Poetry, we explore what sets that period apart.

There's plenty of talk about how Russia is dark and dismal, its writers pathologically depressed, and the general mood among the populace about as cheery as a Siberian winter. These stereotypes give short shrift to Russian humor...

What can we learn about Russia, now and throughout history, from its poetry? This month we try to find out, with help from The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, to be released later this month, as reviewed in the Nov/Dec issue of Russian Life.

Is Russian poetry a shortcut to understanding the ever elusive Russian Soul? We aim to find out.

Vodka gets its fair share of PR as far as Russia is concerned. But is it always for the right reasons? October 24 marks the birth of Venedikt Erofeev, at least as well known for his drinking and vagrancy as for his writing.

It's one thing to become famous as a writer or poet in your own country. But what does it take to earn yourself a spot in world literature? By describing the promise of Soviet poet, songwriter, and classic Bulat Okudzhava, translators offer us some insight.

Andrei Platonov spawned many an incongruous image and incomprehensible sentence. Compared by some scholars to James Joyce, he was critiqued by Stalin himself, yet he avoided prosecution. We dig into his challenging literary style.