Popular Historical Fiction: Russia

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Popular Historical Fiction -- Russia

August 1914 & November 1916 by A. Solzhenitsyn (1999): Two novels that present a panoramic view of Imperial Russia in the years before the Revolution including the disastrous Battle of Tannenberg.
Heirs of the Motherland by J. Pella (1993): Count Dimitri Remizov returns to Russia after eighteen years of exile, while Sergei and Anna, still hiding in Katyk, must decide whether to return to St. Petersburg. Book 4 of the 7 book series The Russians.
Hunger by E. Blackwell (2003): In the wake of the 1941 Siege of Leningrad, during which hundreds of thousands of people starved to death, a scientist charged with protecting a collection of rare seeds that could provide food is forced to make a terrible choice.
The Kitchen Boy by R. Alexander (2003): A novel based on the 1918 Bolshevik revolutionary murder of Czar Nicholas II and the rest of the Russian royal family is told from the perspective of the event's only surviving witness, a young kitchen boy.
Last Citadel: a Novel of the Battle of Kursk by D. Robbins. (2003): Soviet and German forces prepare for a vicious standoff, desperate for a victory that could determine the fate of Europe during WWII, in an epic, fictional account of the pivotal Battle of Kursk. By the author of War of the Rats.
The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee (1994): Returning to St. Petersburg after the death of his stepson, Dostoyevsky battles grief, epilepsy, an obsession with his stepson's landlady, and eventually a demonic conspiracy in order to get to the cause of the young man's death.
The Passion by J. Winterson (1987): Passion consumes Henri, a chef with Napoleon's army, and Villanelle, who has lost her heart to a married noblewoman, until the two meet at the gates of Moscow and form a bond based on bitter loss.
The Siege by H. Dunmore (2001): Set against the turbulent backdrop of Leningrad in 1941, an intricately woven tapestry of love and war follows the Levin family—twenty-two-year-old Anna, her young brother Kolya, and their father, Mikhail-as they struggle to survive during the German siege.
War and Peace by L. Tolstoy, trans. By C. Garnett (1931): The monumental Russian classic c onsidered by many to be the greatest novel ever written reflects the life and times of Russia during the Napoleonic War.

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