Tolstoy ("Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace")? Absolutely! Gogol ("Dead Souls," "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt")? Most definitely. Chekhov (short stories, plays)? He's the best. Dostoyevsky ("Crime and Punishment," "The Idiot," "Notes from Underground")? Need you even ask? Turgenev ("Fathers and Sons," "Sportsman's Notes"), Goncharov ("Oblomov"), Leskov ("On the Edge of the World"), Pushkin's crystal-clear prose ("Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin"), Lermontov's "The Hero of Our Time"? Of course! The great 19-century Russian literature! One probably does not need to read anyone else, anything more, does one, to know all there is to know about Russia and its much-hyped (yet quite real nevertheless) spirit of unending soul-searching... Well, one does, of course. (Why else would we posit such a blatantly rhetorical thesis!)

Additionally listed below, in no particular order, are some of the books--just a few!--the reading of which will make your stay in St. Petersburg, as well as the Russian Literature Lecture Series, a so much more rewarding experience. (And on a more serious note, students seeking credit are expected to read at least five books by the authors mentioned in this section, either from the "19-century" list above, or a more contemporary one below).

"Petersburg," by Andrey Bely

"The Ladies from St. Petersburg," by Nina Berberova

"The Foundation Pit," by Andrey Platonov

"The Master and Margarita," by Mikhail Bulgakov

"The Hedgehog and the Fox," by Isaiah Berlin

"Hope Against Hope," by Nadezhda Mandelstam

"Leningrad/American Writers in the Soviet Union," by Lyn Hejinian, Michael Davidson, et al

"Less Than One: Selected Essays" and "On Grief and Reason," by Joseph Brodsky

"The Man With the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd," by Daniil Kharms, et al

"Incidences," by Daniil Kharms

"Bend Sinister," "Pnin," "The Gift," "Lectures on Russian Literature," by Vladimir Nabokov

"Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years," by Brian Boyd

"Pushkin House," by Andrei Bitov

"A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia," "Omon Ra," "Life of the Insects," by Victor Pelevin

"Moscow to the End of the Line" (or "Moscow Circles"), by Venedikt Erofeev

"The Burn," by Vassily Axyonov

"Goatibex Canstellation," by Fazil Iskander

"The Faculty of Useless Knowledge," by Yury Dombrovsky

"The Twelve Chairs," by Ilf and Petrov

"Another Life," by Yuri Trifonov

"33 Moments of Happiness," by Ingo Schulze

"Lenin's Tomb" by David Remnick