Alma Books

On his way back to Russia after some years spent in the West, Grigory Mikhailovich Litvinov, the son of a retired official of merchant stock, stops over in Baden-Baden to meet his fiancée Tatyana. However, a chance encounter with his old flame, the manipulative Irina - now married to a general and a prominent figure in aristocratic expatriate...

Inspired by Dostoevsky's own gambling addiction and written under pressure in order to pay off his creditors and retain his rights to his literary legacy, The Gambler is set in the casino of the fictional German spa town of Roulettenburg and follows the misfortunes of the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich. As he succumbs to the temptations of the...

Set during the Pugachov rebellion against Catherine the Great, The Captain's Daughter was Pushkin's only completed novel and remains one of his most popular works. The inexperienced and impetuous young nobleman Pyotr Grinyev is sent on military service to a remote fortress, where he falls in love with Masha, Captain Mironov's daughter - but then...

Professor Persikov, an eccentric zoologist, stumbles upon a new light ray that accelerates growth and reproduction rates in living organisms. In the wake of a plague that has decimated the country's poultry stocks, Persikov's discovery is exploited as a means to correct the problem. As foreign agents, the state and the Soviet media all seize upon...

In this collection of short stories, drawing heavily from the author's own experiences as a medical graduate on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Bulgakov describes a young doctor's turbulent and often brutal introduction to his practice in the backward village of Muryovo.Using a sharply realistic and humorous style, Bulgakov reveals his doubts...

In order to rescue his beloved Lyudmila, who has been abducted by the evil wizard Chernomor, the warrior Ruslan faces an epic and perilous quest, encountering a multitude of fantastic and terrifying characters along the way.The basis for Glinka's famous opera of the same name, Ruslan and Lyudmila - Pushkin's second longest poetical work - is a...