August 28, 2019

17 Readings on Tolstoy


17 Readings on Tolstoy

On this day in 1828 (Old Style date; New Style the date is September 9), Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born. We scoured our archives and offer this list of readings on his life and works.

  1. A short biography of Tolstoy. {online subscription required}
  2. A rumination on reading the great author and on reading in Russian, by Bob Blaisdell.
  3.  A translation of two short stories by Tolstoy, also by Bob Blaisdell.
  4. Seven fun facts about War and Peace, by Eugenia Sokolskaya?
  5. An offsite link to a New Yorker piece by James Wood, on how War and Peace works.
  6. On visiting a Tolstoy retreat outside Samara. {online subscription required}
  7. Visiting Sophia Tolstaya in the kitchen. {online subscription required}
  8. War, Peace and Cable – on the 2016 War and Peace miniseries.
  9. Can you read Anna Karenina every day? Let's find out.
  10. And what about reading Anna Karenina the first time?
  11. A pair of Americans trace Tolstoy's walking journey from Moscow to Tula. {online subscription required}
  12. A book on Tolstoy's final flight and death in a train station. {online subscription required}
  13. On the descendants of the great writer. {online subscription required}
  14. Optina Pustyn – a retreat the Tolstoy favored. {online subscription required}
  15. An article on the central messages in Tolstoy's writings. {online subscription required}
  16. The Christian sect that Tolstoy helped survive with proceeds from one of his final books. {online subscription required}
  17. A recipe for hot apple compote that Tolstoy loved. {online subscription required}
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Some of Our Books

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

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.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Fearful Majesty

Fearful Majesty

This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

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