Greatest Russian Novels Of All Time Novels & Stories

Some of them read multiple times judging by the cracking of the binding. History. Military strategy. Economics. Law. Psychology. Philosophy. One entire shelf of biographies of powerful men across different centuries and continents. And then something that surprised me. Fiction. A whole section of it tucked into the far corner like something private. Novels. Some of them old enough that the titles had faded. I pulled one out carefully. A Russian novel. Thick. Dense. The kind of book that required patience and silence and the willingness to sit inside discomfort for extended periods.

It sank even deeper but I tried not to show it. "Why are you telling me? You usually don't." He was quiet, till he breathed. "I don't know," before his footsteps got entirely erased. * * * * My fingers trailed across the spine of the books and I stopped on a white covered book. I pull it out of the shelf and hold it in both hands. "Crime and Punishment," I read aloud before gazing down at the author's name. "Fyodor Dos-tos-to-eeev-evsky?" I squint my eyes. "Fyodor Dostoevsky!"

image he worked so hard to maintain. I closed the closet, still grinning, and wandered into his bedroom. On his nightstand I found more books, all by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Idiot, White Nights. I picked one up and flipped through it. The pages were worn, corners folded and some lines underlined. He wasn't just pretending to like this stuff, he really was a superfan of Russian literature. I didn't believe it when he first told me, but now I believed it without a doubt.