Published between 1852, when the author was twenty-four years old, and 1854, this trilogy (Childhood-Boyhood-Youth) is inspired by the themes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an author whom Tolstoy idolized as a boy. These three books already introduce the main features of Tolstoy's literary production. They constitute the psychological story of the protagonist's growth to maturity as a man, constructed with a manipulation between autobiography and literary fiction. Reading the early novels is cr...

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Poor Folk’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’.Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Dostoyevsky includes original annotations and illustration...

This carefully crafted ebook: “The Greatest Works of Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment + The Brother's Karamazov + The Idiot + Notes from Underground + The Gambler + Demons (The Possessed / The Devils)” contains 6 books in one volume and is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.Table of Contents:Crime and PunishmentThe Brother's KaramazovThe IdiotNotes from UndergroundThe GamblerDemons (The Possessed / T...

Dead Souls tells of the adventures of a small landowner who wanders the Russian province in search of serfs. In order to get rich from land in the governorate, he in fact needs to have a certain number of peasants, which is why he devises the dead souls trick. Leaving his job as a clerk, he roams the countryside ruined by famine and cholera to buy cheaply the peasants who have died since the last census and who therefore turn out to be alive for the institutions and for whom taxes are stil...

Nothing is better than a great book. And, if it is a foreign book? Even better!You can learn a lot from reading books in your target language. You can benefit from a book’s message and equally from its language. In other words, a book can improve your way of life and your language learning at the same time.So, what’s the best way to read a book in your target language?A language is not only grammar and vocabulary. A language is a completely different lens on the world....

Set in the appropriately named Roulettenburg, a German spa with a casino and an international clientele, The Gambler tells the story of the gambling episodes, tangled love affairs, and complicated lives of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young gambler, Polina Alexandrovna, the woman he loves, a pair of French adventurers, and other characters. Welcomed into the colorful court of parasites revolving around a now ruined general, the protagoist is won over by the demon of gambling and becomes a professi...

A new translation by Scot James Hogarth for the first unabridged English edition of the novel, which tells the story of an illiterate fisherman from the Channel Islands who must free a ship that has run aground in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, a shipowner's daughter.

First written in 1906, Leonid Andreyev's 'Life of Man' is a five-act play which was debuted in 1907. The play follows Man through all the ups and downs life throws at him. Man never knows what life has in store for him, and experiences everything from poverty to affluence and back again. It is a play which has its' joyful moments, but which is tinged throughout with sadness, loss, tragedy, and regret as it tries to uncover the meaning of life.

First published in 1923 'Through Russia' is a collection of short stories by the well-known Russian author, Maxim Gorky. The collection includes 'The Birth of a Man', 'Nilushka', and 'The Dead Man'. With some of the stories written during the turbulent period of the Russian Revolution, the tales in this collection frequently deal with the social issues of the time. The focus is on the struggles of everyday, ordinary people, portraying them in a sympathetic and compassionate way. A great in...

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character. Gogol masterfully portrayed those defects through Chichikov (the main character) and people which he encountered in his endeavours. Those people are typical of then Russian middle-class. Gogol himself saw it as an «epic poem in prose», and within the bo...

Childhood is the first published novel by Leo Tolstoy, released under the initials L. N. in the November 1852 issue of the popular Russian literary journal The Contemporary.It is the first in a series of three novels and is followed by Boyhood and Youth. Published when Tolstoy was just twenty-three years old, the book was an immediate success, earning notice from other Russian novelists including Ivan Turgenev, who heralded the young Tols...

First published in 1862, 'Fathers and Sons' is perhaps the most famous novel by renowned Russian author Ivan Turgenev. Turgenev had become increasingly aware of the widening schism at the time between liberals and the growing nihilist movement, which became his focus for this story. The tale follows the return of University students Bazarov and Kirsanov to their small village home, where they find their newly acquired worldviews coming into direct conflict with the beliefs of the previous ...