The 16 Greatest Russian Novels of All Time

Sweeping imperial epics, feverish confessions, and biting satires that defined a whole literary tradition, from doorstop classics to slim subversive gems. Where do you stand?

1

Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky's psychological study of a student who commits murder and faces his conscience.

1000pts

2

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy's sweeping epic of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars.

984pts

3

Fathers and Sons

Turgenev's generational clash centered on the nihilist Bazarov.

681pts

4

The Master and Margarita

Bulgakov's satirical fantasy in which the Devil visits Soviet Moscow.

681pts

5

Eugene Onegin

Pushkin's verse novel of a jaded aristocrat and the woman he spurns.

681pts

6

Doctor Zhivago

Pasternak's epic of love and survival through the Russian Revolution.

681pts

7

Life and Fate

Grossman's panoramic WWII novel often called a twentieth-century War and Peace.

681pts

8

Demons

Dostoevsky's dark novel of revolutionary fanaticism in a provincial town.

681pts

9

We

Zamyatin's pioneering dystopia of a regimented future society.

681pts

10

The Brothers Karamazov

Dostoevsky's final novel probing faith, doubt, and patricide among three brothers.

619pts

11

Anna Karenina

Tolstoy's tragic novel of love, adultery, and society in imperial Russia.

545pts

12

The Idiot

Dostoevsky's portrait of a Christ-like innocent adrift in cynical high society.

545pts

13

Dead Souls

Gogol's comic satire of a swindler buying deceased serfs across the Russian countryside.

545pts

14

A Hero of Our Time

Lermontov's portrait of the cynical, Byronic officer Pechorin in the Caucasus.

545pts

15

Oblomov

Goncharov's satire of a listless nobleman who can barely leave his bed.

454pts

16

And Quiet Flows the Don

Sholokhov's Nobel-winning epic of Cossack life through war and revolution.

454pts