Alma Books

Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina scrutinizes fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, “moral" life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile,...

First published in 1859, Oblomov is an indisputable classic of Russian literature, comparable in its stature to such masterpieces as Gogol's Dead Souls, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. The book centres on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time...

One of the great achievements of twentieth-century Russian émigré literature, Dark Avenues - translated here for the first time into English in its entirety - took Bunin's poetic mastery of language to new heights.Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of the Russian cultural and historical crises of the preceding decades, this...