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. 1
   Crime and Punishment

   Dostoevsky's psychological study of a student who commits murder and faces his conscience.
   1000pts
2. 2
   War and Peace

   Leo Tolstoy's sweeping epic of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars.
   977pts
3. 3
   Fathers and Sons

   Turgenev's generational clash centered on the nihilist Bazarov.
   517pts
4. 4
   The Master and Margarita

   Bulgakov's satirical fantasy in which the Devil visits Soviet Moscow.
   517pts
5. 5
   Eugene Onegin

   Pushkin's verse novel of a jaded aristocrat and the woman he spurns.
   517pts
6. 6
   Doctor Zhivago

   Pasternak's epic of love and survival through the Russian Revolution.
   517pts
7. 7
   Life and Fate

   Grossman's panoramic WWII novel often called a twentieth-century War and Peace.
   517pts
8. 8
   Demons

   Dostoevsky's dark novel of revolutionary fanaticism in a provincial town.
   517pts
9. 9
   We

   Zamyatin's pioneering dystopia of a regimented future society.
   517pts
10. 10
    The Brothers Karamazov

    Dostoevsky's final novel probing faith, doubt, and patricide among three brothers.
    423pts
11. 11
    Anna Karenina

    Tolstoy's tragic novel of love, adultery, and society in imperial Russia.
    310pts
12. 12
    The Idiot

    Dostoevsky's portrait of a Christ-like innocent adrift in cynical high society.
    310pts
13. 13
    Dead Souls

    Gogol's comic satire of a swindler buying deceased serfs across the Russian countryside.
    310pts
14. 14
    A Hero of Our Time

    Lermontov's portrait of the cynical, Byronic officer Pechorin in the Caucasus.
    310pts
15. 15
    Oblomov

    Goncharov's satire of a listless nobleman who can barely leave his bed.
    172pts
16. 16
    And Quiet Flows the Don

    Sholokhov's Nobel-winning epic of Cossack life through war and revolution.
    172pts