Larissa Volokhonsky

Overview: First published in Italy in 1957 amidst international controversy, Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Here is a masterful chronicle of its outbreak and the consequences: army revolts, irrational killings, starvation, epidemics, Communist Party inquisitions. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself...

Anna Karenina is the story of a married aristocrat/socialite and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. The story opens when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother's unbridled womanizing. A bachelor, Vronsky is eager to marry her if she will agree to leave her husband Karenin, a senior government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, the moral laws of the Russian Orthodox Church, her...

"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, War's Unwomanly Face is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of stories of women's experiences in World War II, both on the front lines, on the home front, and in occupied territories. This is a new, distinct version of the war we're so familiar with. Alexievich gives voice to women whose stories are lost in the official narratives, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal...

Chichikov, an amusing and often confused schemer, buys deceased serfs' names from landholders' poll tax lists hoping to mortgage them for profit

A collection of fiction, travel narratives, and epistolary tales includes "The Queen of Spades," in which an elderly countess is rumored to possess a supernatural secret for winning at cards.

A man must endure relentless physical and mental punishments as retribution for his act of murder.

"Chekhov's genius left an indelible impact on every literary form in which he wrote, but none more so than short fiction. Now, renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky give us their peerless renderings of fifty-two Chekhov stories--a full deck! These stories, which span the full arc of his career, reveal the extraordinary variety and unexpectedness of his work, from the farcically comic to the darkly complex, showing that there...

"A collection of personal narratives told by those who were children during World War II and survived harrowing experiences. So many children were separated from their loved ones in the midst of the terror and chaos. As a result, some grew up in orphanages or were raised by grandparents or extended family; others were taken in and cared for by strangers who risked punishment for such acts. Still others lived on their own or became underage soldiers...