It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide

Vintage Classic Russians Series

6 books in this series
Anna Karenina (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Anna Karenina (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir Nabokov

Anna is a beautiful, intelligent woman whose passionate affair with the dashing Count Vronsky leads her to ruin. But her story is also about a search for meaning, and by twinning it with that of Levin, an awkward idealist whose happy marriage and domestic trials form the backdrop for a similar quest, Tolstoy creates a rich and complex masterpiece that has captured the imagination of readers for decades.

'I've read and re-read this novel and every time I find another layer in the story' Philippa Gregory

TRANSLATED BY LOUISE AND AYLMER MAUDE


The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.
Crime and Punishment (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Crime and Punishment (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
'The best translation of Crime and Punishment currently available... An especially faithful re-creation...with a coiled-spring kinetic energy... Don't miss it' Washington Post

Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, immured in poverty and deprivation, Rashkolnikov is drawn to commit a terrible crime. In the aftermath, Rashkolnikov is dogged by madness, guilt and a calculating detective, and a feverish cat-and-mouse game unfolds. The only hope for redemption, if Rashkolnikov can but recognise it, lies in the virtuous and faithful Sonya.

TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

The Vintage Classics Russians series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.
Doctor Zhivago (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Doctor Zhivago (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Read this stunning new translation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the acclaimed translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Yuri Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds, and in love with the tender and beautiful nurse Lara.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have restored the rhythms, tone, precision, and poetry of Pasternak's original, bringing this classic of world literature gloriously to life for a new generation of readers.

The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.
Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
Life and Fate is an epic tale of twentieth-century Russia told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad.

As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war.

Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece.

'One of the finest Russian novels of the 20th century' Daily Telegraph

'Compelling... Grossman's portrait is timelessly relevant... Life and Fate is worth all the audience it can find' The Times

VINTAGE CLASSICS RUSSIAN SERIES - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.
The Master and Margarita (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
The Master and Margarita (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

'A masterpiece - a classic of twentieth-century fiction' New York Times

Bulgakov paints a powerful picture of Stalin's regime in this allegorical classic.


The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order are in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.

The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history
War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
War and Peace (Vintage Classic Russians Series)
'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times

Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov.

'It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it' Andrew Marr

The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more