Russian Literature and Culture

Featuring examples from a wide range of folk sources and periods, a collection of Russian science fiction and fantasy tales includes pieces by such top names as Pushkin, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky and offers insight into how the genre evolved throughout times of political, social, and technological upheaval.

A 1921 Soviet science-fiction classic involves the adventures of space travelers Los and Gusev, who discover an ancient civilization on Mars, become embroiled in the intrigues of its court, and participate in a surprising climax.

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty" something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel's publication in Russia.

"[Zamyatin's] intuitive grasp of the irrational side of totalitarianism-- human sacrifice, cruelty as an end in itself--makes [We] superior to Huxley's [Brave New World]."--George Orwell Translated by Natasha Randall * Foreword by Bruce Sterling   Written in 1921, We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of mathematician D-503, who, to his shock, experiences the most disruptive emotion imaginable: love. At once satirical and sobering--and now available in a powerful new translation--We is both a rediscovered classic and a work of tremendous relevance to our own times.

The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, this classic novel was written during Stalin's regime and could not be published until many years after its author's death. When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates--including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch--his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov's dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita's enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.

Russian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age." In his third novel, Buddha's Little Finger, Pelevin has created an intellectually dazzling tale about identity and Russian history, as well as a spectacular elaboration of Buddhist philosophy. Moving between events of the Russian Civil War of 1919 and the thoughts of a man incarcerated in a contemporary Moscow psychiatric hospital, Buddha's Little Finger is a work of demonic absurdism by a writer who continues to delight and astonish.

The forces of Light and Darkness have co-existed in a delicate balance for hundreds of years ... until now. Even as the Night Watch polices the Dark Others--among them vampires, witches and shape-shifters--a chain of mysterious events triggers a dreaded, age-old prophecy: An immortal with special powers will come to switch sides, shattering the balance and unleashing an apocalyptic war unlike any the world has ever known.

A memoir by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, covering his trips in 1902, 1906, and 1907 as the first European to explore remote portions of Siberia. Dersu Uzala was his native guide on these trips. The book describes their adventures deep in the wilderness. It is the source for the Kurosawa movie of the same name. A great story of exploration.