A short guide to Russian literature (novels/short stories/poetry/etc. worth reading)
folklore / fairy tales / 12th century
Russian folk-tales by Alexander Afanasyev
Primary Chronicle (history of Kievan Rus’ + slavic mythology)
The Tale of Igor’s Campaign (epic poem)
Krilof and his fables by Ivan Krylov (translated by William Ralston Shedden)
Poor Liza by Nikolai Karamzin
19th century or Golden Age
Woe from Wit by Alexander Griboyedov
Alexander Pushkin. poems: [Ruslan and Lyudmila; The Gypsies; The Bronze Horseman; Eugene Onegin; The Little Tragedies (The Stone Guest, Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight, A Feast in Time of Plague)]; prose: The Queen of Spades; The Captain’s Daughter; Dubrovsky; fairy tales: The Tale of Tsar Saltan; The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish
Mikhail Lermontov. poetry; dramas: Masquerade; Arbenin; poems: Demon; Borodino; prose: A Hero of Our Time
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Storm, The Snow Maiden, Without a Dowry by Alexander Ostrovsky
Short stories (The Portrait, The Nose, The Overcoat) + Taras Bulba; Viy; Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Leo Tolstoy. Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; After the Ball; Anna Karenina; War and Peace
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Humiliated and Insulted; Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; Demons; The Brothers Karamazov
Anton Chekhov. plays: The Cherry Orchard; Three Sisters; Uncle Vanya; The Seagull; short stories: The Death of a Government Clerk; The Chameleon; The Student; Gooseberries; The Man in a Case; Ionych; The Lady with the Dog
20th century or Silver Age
Dark Avenues; The Gentleman from San Francisco by Ivan Bunin
The White Guard, Heart of a Dog, A Country Doctor’s Notebook, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
King, Queen, Knave; The Defens; Invitation to a Beheading; The Enchanter; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Anna Akhmatova. Poetry; Requiem
Vladimir Mayakovsky. Poetry
