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Recommendations based on The White Guardby Mikhail Bulgakov
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The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
And Quiet Flows the Don
by Mikhail Sholokhov
A sweeping epic of the Cossack people during the tumultuous Russian Revolution.
The novel deals with the life of the Cossacks living in the Don River valley during the early 20th century, probably around 1912, just prior to World War I . The plot revolves around the Melekhov ... (Wikipedia)
Heart of a Dog
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A satirical story of a scientist who attempts to transform a stray dog into a human.
Moscow , 1924. While foraging for trash one winter day, a stray dog is found by a cook and scalded with boiling water. Lying forlorn in a doorway, the dog awaits his end awash in self-pity. To his ... (Wikipedia)
Demons
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A fictional exploration of the human condition, examining the darker sides of our nature.
The novel is in three parts. There are two epigraphs, the first from Pushkin's poem "Demons" and the second from Luke 8:32–36. After an almost illustrious but prematurely curtailed academic career ... (Wikipedia)
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man's struggle to find his place in society, and the moral dilemmas he faces.
Prince Myshkin, a young man in his mid-twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, is on a train to Saint Petersburg on a cold November morning. He is returning to ... (Wikipedia)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Epic tale of war, peace, and love, focusing on the lives of five aristocratic families.
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg , at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and confidante to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna . Many of the main characters ... (Wikipedia)
Doctor Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak
A love story set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, exploring the tragedy of a nation in upheaval.
The plot of Doctor Zhivago is long and intricate. It can be difficult to follow for two reasons. First, Pasternak employs many characters, who interact with each other throughout the book in ... (Wikipedia)
A Country Doctor's Notebook
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A young doctor's struggles to practice medicine in a small rural village.
Brilliant stories that show the growth of a novelist's mind, and the raw material that fed the wild surrealism of Bulgakov's later fiction. With the ink still wet on his diploma, the ... (Goodreads)
We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
A dystopian tale of a totalitarian state and its citizens' struggle for freedom.
A few hundred years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the project's chief ... (Wikipedia)
Dead Souls
by Nikolai Gogol
A satirical tale of a man's quest for wealth, exposing the corruption of 19th century Russian society.
The story follows the exploits of Chichikov, a middle-aged gentleman of middling social class and means. Chichikov arrives in a small town and turns on the charm to woo key local officials and ... (Wikipedia)
The Twelve Chairs
by Ilya Ilf
A comedic tale of two men's quest for hidden jewels in a chair with a secret compartment.
In the Soviet Union in 1927, a former Marshal of Nobility , Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov, works as the registrar of marriages and deaths in a sleepy provincial town. His mother-in-law ... (Wikipedia)
Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman
An emotionally charged exploration of the Soviet Union during World War II and the power of fate.
The novel at heart narrates the history of the family of Viktor Shtrum and the Battle of Stalingrad . It is written, despite attempting to get away from it, in the socialist realist style, which can ... (Wikipedia)
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's harrowing experience of the horrors of war.
The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I . The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to ... (Wikipedia)
Three Comrades
by Erich Maria Remarque
Three German friends struggle to survive in the aftermath of World War I, facing poverty, illness, and political turmoil.
The city, which never is referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts in ... (Wikipedia)
Invitation to a Beheading
by Vladimir Nabokov
A man's surreal experience in a dystopian world of psychological and physical torment.
Narrated omnisciently , the novel opens with Cincinnatus C., a thirty-year-old teacher and the protagonist, being sentenced to death by beheading for the crime "gnostical turpitude" in twenty days' ... (Wikipedia)
Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens
A satirical novel about the corrupt society of Victorian England, where money and greed rule all.
Having made his fortune from London's rubbish, a rich misanthropic miser dies, estranged from all except his faithful employees Mr and Mrs Boffin. By his will, his fortune goes to his estranged son ... (Wikipedia)
A Hero of Our Time
by Mikhail Lermontov
A story of a young man's journey through life and his experiences of love, betrayal and morality.
In its adventurous happenings, its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues, A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the ... (Goodreads)
Oblomov
by Ivan Goncharov
A story of a man's struggle to break free from his life of stagnation and inactivity.
The novel focuses on the life of the main character, Ilya Ilyich Oblomov. Oblomov is a member of the upper middle class and the son of a member of Russia's nineteenth-century landed gentry. Oblomov's ... (Wikipedia)
Eugene Onegin
by Alexander Pushkin
A poetic novel of unrequited love and tragic consequences, set in early 19th century Russia.
In the 1820s, Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg dandy , whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties, and nothing more. Upon the death of a wealthy uncle, he inherits a substantial fortune ... (Wikipedia)
The Black Obelisk
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's story of survival in the chaos and destruction of WWI.
From the author of the masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Black Obelisk, is a classic novel of the troubling aftermath of World War I in Germany. A hardened young veteran from the First ... (Goodreads)
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
A social commentary on the English legal system, exploring themes of inequality, injustice and corruption.
Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually ... (Goodreads)
The Good Soldier Švejk
by Jaroslav Hašek
A Czech soldier's satirical adventures during WWI, highlighting the absurdity of war.
The story begins in Prague with news of the assassination in Sarajevo that precipitates World War I . Švejk displays such enthusiasm about faithfully serving the Austrian Emperor in battle that no ... (Wikipedia)
Les Liaisons dangereuses
by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
An intricate game of love, lust and manipulation as two rival aristocrats scheme to outwit one another.
The Vicomte de Valmont is determined to seduce the virtuous, married, and therefore inaccessible Madame de Tourvel, who is staying with Valmont's aunt while her husband is away on a court case. At ... (Wikipedia)
The Mystery Knight
by George R.R. Martin
A knight embarks on a quest for justice, with help from a mysterious stranger.
The Mystery Knight is a novella published in 2010 as part of the Warriors anthology, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It is the third in the series of "Dunk and Egg" stories. ... (Goodreads)
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
by Nikolai Gogol
A collection of bizarre, humorous and satirical stories set in 19th century Russia.
When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself "amazed." "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places ... (Goodreads)
The Terror
by Dan Simmons
A gripping survival story set during the doomed Arctic expedition of the HMS Terror.
The story begins, in medias res, in the winter of 1847, when HMS, Terror, and HMS, Erebus, have been trapped in ice, 28 miles north-northwest of King William Island , for more than a year. The ... (Wikipedia)
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
An orphan's journey of survival and resilience in the face of poverty and injustice.
Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune, raised in a workhouse in the fictional town of Mudfog , located 70 miles (110 km) north of London . , , , He is orphaned by his father's ... (Wikipedia)
Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
A story of generational divide, exploring the differences between fathers and sons.
Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg . He returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolay, gladly ... (Wikipedia)
Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire
Collection of poems exploring the beauty and depravity of human nature.
Charles Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs ... (Goodreads)
