• Five Mysteries Set in Russia - Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Five Mysteries Set in Russia - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Five Mysteries Set in Russia - The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov
  • Five Mysteries Set in Russia - Five Plays: Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
  • Five Mysteries Set in Russia - Captain Ribnikov by Alexander Kuprin

Five Mysteries Set in Russia, recommended by Boris Akunin

The golden age of mystery largely passed Russia by, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some great crime novels produced over the last 150 years. Bestselling crime novelist Boris Akunin, who was born Grigory Chkhartishvili in Soviet Georgia and now lives in exile in London, recommends five Russian mysteries—great works of literature that happen to also have a crime at their heart. If you’d like to see Boris/Grigory in person, he’s speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival on 18 March, 2024 at 6pm.

  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine by Owen Matthews
  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Russia's War by Jade McGlynn
  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia by Natasha Lance Rogoff
  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg by Olga Petri
  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR by Tricia Starks
  • The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize - Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling by Ryan Tucker Jones

The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Ekaterina Schulmann

Since its invasion of Ukraine last year, Russia has been much in the news, with many of us struggling to better understand its politics, history, society and culture. Fortunately, we have the Pushkin House Book Prize, which every year celebrates the best nonfiction written about Russia and available in English. Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist.

  • The best books on Ukraine and Russia - Ukraine and Russia: From Civilied Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul D'Anieri
  • The best books on Ukraine and Russia - Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know by Serhy Yekelchyk
  • The best books on Ukraine and Russia - Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History by Yuri Kostenko
  • The best books on Ukraine and Russia - Ukraine in Histories and Stories: Essays by Ukrainian Intellectuals
  • The best books on Ukraine and Russia - The Orphanage: A Novel by Serhiy Zhadan

The best books on Ukraine and Russia, recommended by Serhii Plokhy

Thousands of people have been killed since 2014 in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in a war that has been rife with disinformation, misleading narratives and false flag operations. Here Serhii Plokhy, Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, recommends books to better understand the conflict, from an introductory work by an eminent historian to the latest work of some of Ukraine’s leading novelists.