A classic must-read. Part 1

A classic cannot always be relevant. Any text, as Eco wrote, can be interpreted or used. In the first case, you accept the terms of the game set by the author. You interpret the text in terms of the conditions and the time in which it was created. Explore it to understand its essence and nature. And when using it, you are free to give your own assessment of what is happening: criticize the characters, discuss their actions, etc. The use case is closer to me. Interpretation is more for literary monuments. That is why they are not relevant. But you can also find benefit in them - language, syllable: all this will help you speak and write better, formulate your thoughts more competently.
You have to grow up to many books. Not age, but spiritually, and this is not the same thing. Even to many books from the school curriculum. You can be advised a lot of books, but any reading will be of no use until we study the classics. Our list contains only a small fraction of those classics that are strictly required reading. However, we will try our best to offer you the best.

Faust, Johann Goethe

Fools are content
They see meaning in every word.

The name of the book is so firmly connected with its author that many are sure that Goethe's Faust is the name of the protagonist of the work, or even his title.

It is worth reading if only to know what one of the most quoted, respected, praised and mentioned novels in human history is. Fans of motivation should like it, there is more than enough of it here. After all, my dear, this is not just a story about how the charming Satan acquired the soul from the poor and hard worker Faust. This is a novel about people who rebelled against the vegetative reality in the name of freedom of action and thought. About people called to transform the world by joint free and reasonable work.

And it is also a storehouse of quotes and wise sayings, in addition to the winged one: "Stop, a moment, you are beautiful!" And if you try to understand this not the easiest book, then in return it will endow you with the deep wisdom of the ages, accumulated by Mr. Goethe and poured out like an ink stream on white pages.

The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri

There is a force that is called reason.
And you are able to weigh on the scales
Good and evil.

It is an unthinkable crime against humanity to claim that The Divine Comedy is outdated, irrelevant, and boring. It is boring for narrow-minded people, outdated for the ignorant, irrelevant for the stupid. Alighieri wrote the immortal opus of the name of the triumph of life not so that some idiot, seeing many letters, would begin to vilify the work of his life.

It doesn't matter if you are a Christian or a Muslim, an atheist or a believer - everyone should read this work. Even more so as an atheist. Not in order to figure out which of the circles of Hell you will fall into, but in order to learn to distinguish between good and bad, good and evil, worthy from vile. The stories of students, real and not so, make you think about life. Do not come to God, but understand yourself.

You can even describe this masterpiece as a review of a computer game. "The plot is an interesting, carefully thought out to the smallest detail world." And you can at the same time study the history of Italy during its most interesting period. How I love this piece!

If you want to throw yourself out of the window,” Schweik said. - So go to the room, I opened the window. I would not advise you to jump from the kitchen, because you will fall into the garden right on the roses, break all the bushes, and you will have to pay for it. And from that window, you'll fly off perfectly onto the sidewalk and, if you're lucky, break your neck. If you are not lucky, then you will only break your ribs, arms and legs, and you will have to pay for treatment in the hospital.

Josef Schweik is a separate layer of literary heroes who left the book pages and began to live their own lives. He does not need a literary history - he himself is a walking anecdote. There are few such heroes, except that he, Don Quixote, and ... And, perhaps, everything. No one has such anecdotal significance. Therefore, some perceive "Schweik" as an easy, unpretentious story. Yes, it is written in a masterpiece of satirical language, sometimes rude, sometimes ridiculous. And yet, this is an incredibly accurate and sometimes even offensive satire, denouncing the war, the military leadership and, of course, idiots from society.

Hasek, who is as epic as he is insane, created the same hero. And despite the title of "idiot" thanks to the merciless mockery of the delirium reigning around, Josef Schweik, smoking a pipe, drinking beer and telling one story more beautiful than another, begins to seem like a completely normal person. So if suddenly you are considered an idiot, read this masterpiece, maybe you are really not yourself? And what are the exact quotes here: from the topical: "From the walls of the police department breathed the spirit of power alien to the people," to the vital: "The trouble is, when a person suddenly begins to philosophize - it always smells of delirium tremens." They can be collected, inserted as a comment on any news, and they will always be, as they say, on point.

"Childhood", Maxim Gorky

To die is not great wisdom, you would know how to live!

There could be Tolstoy's "Childhood" here, but this is not his main work, there are others, more important and sensitive, which will characterize the count and life better. You read them anyway. But with Gorky, everything is quite the opposite: without reading childhood, you will not understand either the author himself or life. The sad autobiographical narrative of Gorky's first years, which you successfully skipped in high school, explains many things much better. It's even strange: book actions take place at the end of the 19th century, but life, people and human scum have not changed. It is about these things that Gorky, from the position of a wise-haired peasant, writes. And it is impossible to break away, and it is impossible to argue with the opinion of the author.

Unfortunately, the image of the Bolshevik writer alienates modern readers from him, but in vain. "Old Woman Izergil" is one of the best folklore works in history, "At the Bottom" is social, "Makar Chudra" sounds funny, and, of course, the wonderful "Childhood" that you need to read for yourself, and not out of respect for the school program and the person after whom the streets and planes were named.

"Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoevsky

Poverty is not a vice, it is a truth. I know that drunkenness is not a virtue, and this is all the more so. But poverty, sir, poverty is a vice. In poverty, you still retain your nobility of innate feelings; in poverty, never anyone.

Absolutely expected piece on this list, right? And it is precisely because of this "expectation", because of his fame, because of the awe that the name of the author causes, that it is worth reading. Because Dostoevsky has become fashionable. And it is disgusting that many people try to love and read it, although what they read does not evoke any emotions in them. Therefore, you must independently study the most iconic work of the master and form your attitude towards it without regard to fashion and universal reverence.

Well, of course, not only for this. The book is really interesting and good. The author plunges into the psychological process of the crime, like Jacques-If Cousteau into the bosom of another sea, and fishes out pictures from there that make the criminal understand rather than condemn. And what colorful and unfortunate heroes are everywhere, it’s even difficult to call them secondary.

But from the position of personal opinion, many aspects can be argued, and this is right, this is good: when a book gives rise to controversy, it means that it is obligatory.

"The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

All women are like that,” said Don Quixote. - A distinctive feature of their nature is to despise those who love them, and love those who despise them.

Pay attention to the quote. It was written 200 years before Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin expressed the same idea in poetic form for his Eugene Onegin. In the very novel of wisdom, row at least with a spoon, the main thing is to distinguish it in time.

Cervantes wrote a unique work that has everything: to laugh, to write out aphorisms, and to think. Not everyone will submit to a noticeably outdated style, not everyone will be pleased with the scale of the work, but those who are eager to find out why the name of the protagonist has become a household name, and the name of Cervantes is woven with golden threads into world culture, may begin to look at some things from a different angle.

A novel about the adventures of a completely sick man, written by a writer going crazy, is considered by many as a parody of the chivalric novels that had gone out of fashion by that time. But in fact, the great genius laughs at a society that has completely lost its nobility, and the last worthy person turned out to be the crazy old man Alonso Quijano, who had read these very novels and set off on a journey on a decrepit nag, taking with him the peasant Sancho Panso - the only "voice of reason" in their coordinated team.

Whatever the name is a common noun, whatever the phrase is an aphorism. For 400 years of its existence, the novel has not lost its popularity, giving birth to a bunch of imitators and proudly bearing the title of the best novel in the history of literature. Yes, we all left Gogol's "Overcoat", but first we got off Cervantes' Rosinante.

"Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov

We are not sexual fiends! We don't rape like the good soldiers do. We are unhappy, gentle, well-mannered, dog-eyed people who are adapted enough to control their impulses in the presence of adults, but are ready to give many, many years of life for one opportunity to touch a nymphet.

A novel that turned world literature upside down and made Nabokov a favorite author of both the intelligentsia and poorly educated degenerates who have not read the book, but they really like the idea itself: a sexual relationship between a man and a little girl.

But in fact, Nabokov wrote about great love, which, due to certain circumstances, namely the immaturity of the object of love, was condemned by society. When an adult uncle begins to cohabit with a non-adult girl, it does not end with anything good. After all, the child grows up, she becomes bored, and the damned Lolya ceases to put "love at first sight, from the last sight, from the eternal sight" into anything.

And, of course, separate compliments to Bunin's former heir. Nabokov writes frankly about the forbidden topic, but without obvious vulgarity. The beautiful, rich language of the classical Russian writer describes even the most slippery fragments of an erotic sense as if we are talking about the unrequited love of two adults.

Read the novel that strongly influenced the American literary school and slightly opened the doors of the unacceptable in popular literature.

"Night in Lisbon", Erich Maria Remarque

The world never seems so beautiful as at the moment when you say goodbye to it, when you are deprived of freedom.

"All Quiet on the Western Front", "Three Comrades" - these are, of course, legendary and crazy classic novels, but this story touches no less, to the very heart. It is about the war, even though it is not written from the perspective of a soldier. It is about loss, albeit not combat. It is about the loss of the most precious thing, it is about impotence in the face of tragedy.

You need to grow up to it, you need to be ready for it, because behind the easy title, which is more suitable for a love story, there is a drama that the world has never seen. It is about love, but this love was crushed and swallowed up by the war, which burned everything in the human soul. The desperate confession of a man who has lost everything discourages even the most fierce cynic. You don’t even want to think about how you would live if, God forbid, you were in the place of the narrator.

The novel itself is built as a story within a story, where the unfortunate, against the backdrop of the turmoil of calm Lisbon, tells his story to Ludwig Kern (those who have read "Love thy neighbor" know this hero). This confession should be the payment for tickets for the ship with refugees, but it has become something more. With his style, Remarque is able to turn even a fairy tale about a kolobok into a bestseller about tired people and a lost generation. But here he outdid himself.

"The Golden Calf", Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov

Women love: young, politically literate, long-legged...

Some will be indignant: they say, why the hell did we include the imperishable Ilf and Petrov, and not Gogol or Chekhov, in the lists of classics? After all, against the backdrop of, say, The Cherry Orchard, on which even Americans put on performances, both The Golden Calf and The 12 Chairs seem like light reading.

Well, one can argue with the latter, because if the novel is not known abroad as well as The Inspector General, this does not mean that it is worse. It's just that the realities of the NEP are difficult to explain to the same Palestinians. The story, which is divided into quotes (such as "A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation"), is it really not a classic? This is a classic squared, cubed! Ideal, easy, understandable to everyone, even to a 12-year-old child (at this age, your obedient servant first got acquainted with this reading matter), where every phrase is an aphorism, where even serious moments are presented as ironically as possible. In a sense, this is the history of the country, and in some sense it is a diagnosis of society, and, as often happens, the types and characters described in abundance have not disappeared even in our time.

Ilf and Petrov, the most talented journalists, communicate with the reader in an extremely ironic and intelligent way, choosing such turns of speech that one gets the impression that you are at the performance of a stand-up comedian, in a cozy conversation joking over the Kareyks, Benders, Panikovskys and Shuram Balaganovs.

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio

Who is talking about what, and we are talking about our beloved Renaissance. Well, where without it, if such masterpieces were written in the 14th century! And, surprisingly, this epoch-making work is read very easily. It is clear that the ornate style fashionable at that time is fully present (excuse me, this is not a laconic Dovlatov), but the book is still very easy to read. And most importantly, it is interesting even after so much time.

For some reason, many people think that the word "decameron" sounds somehow dramatic and carries a negative connotation, but in fact the name is translated from Greek as "ten days", that is, ten days. And all these ten days, beautiful young people who fled the city from the plague tell delightful stories to each other, and, as usual, one story is more beautiful than another.

While reading, you begin to enjoy the freedom and looseness of the heroes of Boccaccio's short stories. No framework, they live and enjoy life. And it's wonderful!

For some reason, it is even difficult to explain why, I want to return to the Decameron again and again. The impressions from reading it are as wonderful as the memory of the first love, the first glass of beer, the first prison term. And the stories that these beautiful young people tell, collected from the urban folklore of Florence, mythology and then popular fairy tales, are really interesting. And when, almost 700 years after the writing of these novels, you read Fifty Shades of Grey, you wonder where humanity has taken a wrong turn?

Surely, many believe that classical works, by definition, are long, boring, have many years of writing, and therefore are not always clear to the modern reader. This is a common mistake. After all, in fact, the classic is everything that is not subject to time.

The best classics are brought to your attention. They conquered millions of readers. And even those who claim to be dissatisfied with the creation of the author, believe me, did not remain indifferent.

The themes revealed in such works are relevant for any age. And if a 19th-century author were to write such a book now, it would again become a bestseller. one.
The novel consists of two different, but intertwined parts. The time of the first is modern Moscow, the second is ancient Jerusalem. Each part is filled with events and characters - historical, fictional, as well as scary and amazing creatures.

2.
What forces move the people? They are the result of the actions of individuals - kings, generals - or such a feeling as patriotism, or is there a third force that determines the direction of history. The main characters are painfully looking for the answer to this question.

3.
The novel is based on the experience that Dostoevsky received in hard labor. Student Raskolnikov, who lived in poverty for several months, is convinced that a humane goal will justify the most terrible act, even the murder of a greedy and useless old money-lender.

4.
A novel that was ahead of its time and came out long before the emergence of such a cultural phenomenon as postmodernism. The main characters of the work - 4 sons born from different mothers - symbolize those irrepressible elements that can lead to the death of Russia.

5.
Should I stay with my husband, who was always indifferent to her inner world and never loved her, or should I give myself with all my heart to the one who made her feel happy? Throughout the novel, the heroine, the young aristocrat Anna, suffers from such a choice.

6.
The poor young prince is returning by train home to Russia. On the way, he meets the son of one of the rich merchants, who is obsessed with a passion for one girl, a kept woman. In the metropolitan society, obsessed with money, power and manipulation, the prince turns out to be an outsider.

7.
Despite the name, the work itself has nothing to do with mysticism, which is mainly inherent in the work of this writer. In the tradition of "severe" realism, the life of landowners in the Russian provinces is described, where a former official comes to pull off his scam.

8.
The young Petersburg rake, having had enough of love and secular entertainment, leaves for the village, where a friendship is struck up with a poet who is in love with one of the daughters of a local nobleman. The second daughter falls in love with the rake, but he does not return her feelings.

9.
The famous Moscow surgeon decides to conduct a very risky experiment on a stray dog in his large apartment, where he receives patients. As a result, the animal began to turn into a human. But at the same time he acquired all human vices.

10.
People come to the provincial town who, it would seem, cannot be connected with anything. But they know each other because they belong to the same revolutionary organization. Their goal is to arrange a political revolt. Everything goes according to plan, but one revolutionary decides to quit the game.

These are, in our opinion, the top 10 classic books that everyone should read. But the following works are no less great! Let's go further:

11.
Iconic work of the 19th century. In the center of the story is a student who does not accept traditional public morality and opposes everything old, non-progressive. For him, only scientific knowledge is valuable, which can explain everything. Except love.

12.
By profession he was a doctor, by vocation he was a writer, whose talent was fully revealed when creating short humorous stories. They quickly became classics all over the world. In them, in an accessible language - the language of humor - human vices are revealed.

13.
This work is on a par with Gogol's poem. In it, the main character is also a young adventurer who is ready to promise everyone what, in principle, is impossible to do. And all for the sake of a treasure, which a few more people know about. And no one is going to share it.

14.
After a three-year separation, young Alexander returns to the house of his beloved Sophia to propose to her. However, she refuses him and says that she now loves another. The rejected lover begins to blame the society in which Sophia grew up.

15.
What should a real nobleman do if the life of a young noble girl depends on him? Sacrifice yourself, but do not drop the honor. This is what the young officer directs when the fortress in which he serves is attacked by the impostor tsar.

16.
Terrible poverty and hopelessness suffocate the old inhabitant of Cuba. One day he, as usual, goes to sea, not hoping for a big catch. But this time, a large prey comes across his hook, with which the fisherman fights for several days, not giving her the opportunity to leave.

17.
Ragin selflessly serves as a doctor. However, his zeal is coming to naught, he sees no reason to change life around him, because it is impossible to cure the madness that reigns around him. The doctor begins daily visits to the ward where the mentally ill are kept.

18.
What is more destructive - to do nothing and only indulge in dreams about how it is worth living, or to get up from the couch and start realizing your plans? The young and lazy landowner Ilya Ilyich at first occupied the first position, but after falling in love, he woke up from his sleepy state.

19.
You can write magnificent works not only about the life of a big city, but also about the life of a small Ukrainian farm. During the day, the usual rules apply here, and at night power passes to supernatural forces that can both help and at the same time destroy.

20.
A talented surgeon settles illegally in Paris, but he is not prevented from practicing medicine. Before moving, he lived in Germany, from which he fled, but at the same time he let his beloved die. In the new place, he quickly begins another romance.

21.
The Russian tutor goes on a journey with the family in which he serves. At the same time, he is secretly in love with the girl Polina. And so that she understands all his nobility, he begins to play roulette in the hope of getting big money. And he succeeds, but the girl does not accept the winnings.

22.
The world of family comfort, nobility and true patriotism is breaking down under the onslaught of a social catastrophe in Russia. The fleeing Russian officers settle in Ukraine and hope that they will not fall under the rule of the Bolsheviks here. But one day the defense of the city weakens, and the enemy goes on the offensive.

23.
A cycle of small works that are written in a different artistic manner. Here you can find a romantic duelist, and sentimental stories about eternal love, and a harsh picture of reality in which money rules, and because of them a person can lose the most important thing.

24.
What Pushkin did not succeed in his time, Dostoevsky succeeded. The work is completely a correspondence between a poor official and a young girl who also has a small income. But at the same time, the heroes are not poor in soul.

25.
A story about the invincibility and resilience of a man who does not want to be someone's loyal soldier. For the sake of freedom, Hadji Murad goes over to the side of the imperial troops, but he does this in order to save not himself, but his family, which is held captive by the enemy.

26.
In these seven works, the author leads us through the streets of St. Petersburg, which was built with the help of strength and ingenuity in a swampy area. Deception and violence hide under its harmonious façade. The inhabitants are confused by the city itself, giving them false dreams.

27.
This collection of short stories is the first major work that won recognition for the author. It is based on personal observations while hunting on his mother's estate, where Turgenev learned of the mistreatment of peasants and the injustice of the Russian system.

28.
The protagonist is the son of a landowner whose property was confiscated by a corrupt and treacherous general. After the death of his father, the hero becomes a criminal. To achieve the ultimate goal - revenge - he resorts to more cunning means: he seduces the daughter of his enemy.

29.
This classic war novel is written from the perspective of a young German soldier. The hero is only 18 years old, and under the pressure of his family, friends and society, he enters military service and goes to the front. There he witnesses such horrors that he dares not tell anyone.

30.
Mischievous and energetic Tom enjoys childish pranks and games with his friends. One day, at the city cemetery, he witnesses a murder committed by a local tramp. The hero makes a vow that he will never talk about it, and so begins his journey into adulthood.

31.
The story of a miserable Petersburg official who was robbed of his expensive overcoat. No one wants to help him return the thing, from which the hero eventually becomes seriously ill. Even during the life of the author, critics adequately appreciated the work from which all Russian realism was born.

32.
The novel is on a par with another work of the author - "The Call of the Ancestors". Much of White Fang is also written from the point of view of the dog whose name appears in the title. This allows the author to show how animals see their world and how they see a person.

33.
The novel tells the story of 19-year-old Arkady - the illegitimate son of a landowner and a maid - as he struggles to make amends and "become a Rothschild" despite Russia still being tied to its old value system.

34.
A novel about how the hero, who is very broken and disappointed due to a failed marriage, returns to his estate and finds his love again - only to lose it. This reflects the main theme: a person is not destined to experience happiness, except as something ephemeral.

35.
A dark and fascinating tale tells of the struggle of an indecisive, aloof hero in a world of relative values. The innovative work introduces the moral, religious, political and social themes that dominate the author's later masterpieces.

36.
The narrator arrives in Sevastopol, which is under siege, and makes a detailed inspection of the city. As a result, the reader has the opportunity to study all the features of military life. We get to the dressing station, where horror reigns, and to the most dangerous bastion.

37.
The work is partly based on the life experience of the author, who took part in the war in the Caucasus. A nobleman, disillusioned with his life of privilege, enlists in the army to escape the superficiality of everyday life. A hero in search of a full life.

3 8. $
The first social novel of the author, which is partly an artistic introduction for those who belonged to the previous era, but lived at a time when political and social movements began. This era has already been forgotten, but it is worth remembering.

39.
One of the greatest and most successful dramatic works. A Russian aristocrat and her family return to their estate to see how the public auction is going, where their house and huge garden are put up for debt. The old masters lose in the fight against the new trends of life.

40.
The hero was sentenced to death on charges of killing his wife, but was subsequently exiled to Siberian penal servitude for 10 years. Life in prison is hard for him - he is an intellectual and experiences the anger of other prisoners. Gradually, he overcomes disgust and experiences a spiritual awakening.

41.
On the eve of his wedding, a young aristocrat learns that his fiancee had an affair with the king. It was a blow to his pride, so he renounces everything worldly and takes the vows as a monk. So pass long years of humility and doubt. Until he decides to become a hermit.

42.
A manuscript falls into the hands of the editor, which tells about a young and depraved man who worked as a forensic investigator. He becomes one of the "corners" in the love triangle in which the married couple is involved. The outcome of the story is the murder of his wife.

43.
A work banned until 1988, in which, through the fate of a military doctor, the story of a people who perished in the turmoil of the revolution is told. From the general madness, the hero, together with his family, runs deep into the country, where he meets the one he does not want to let go.

44.
The protagonist, like all his friends, is a war veteran. He is a poet at heart, but works for a friend who runs a small tombstone business. This money is not enough, and he receives additional income by giving private lessons and playing the organ in a local mental hospital.

45.
In a foreign war, Frederic falls in love with a nurse and tries to seduce her, after which their relationship begins. But one day the hero is wounded by a fragment of a mortar shell, and he is sent to a Milan hospital. There, away from the war, he is healed - both physically and mentally.

46.
During breakfast, the barber discovers a human nose in his bread. With horror, he recognizes it as the nose of a regular visitor who bears the rank of collegiate assessor. In turn, the injured official discovers the loss and submits an absurd ad to the newspaper.

47.
The protagonist, a boy, striving for independence and freedom, escapes from his alcoholic father by faking his own death. And so begins his journey through the south of the country. He meets a runaway slave and they float down the Mississippi River together.

48.
The plot of the poem is based on the events that really took place in St. Petersburg in 1824. The political, historical and existential questions that the author formulates with dazzling power and conciseness continue to be the subject of controversy among critics.

49.
In order to save his beloved, who was forcibly taken away by an evil sorcerer, the warrior Ruslan will have to go on an epic and dangerous journey, facing many fantastic and terrible creatures. This is a dramatic and witty retelling of Russian folklore.

50.
The most famous play describes a family of aristocrats who struggle to find any meaning in their lives. The three sisters and their brother live in a remote province, but they struggle to return to the sophisticated Moscow where they grew up. The play captures the decline of the "masters of life".

51.
The hero is obsessed with an all-consuming love for one princess, who hardly knows about his existence. One day, a society lady receives an expensive bracelet for her birthday. The husband finds a secret admirer and asks him to stop compromising a decent woman.

52.
In this classic literary representation of gambling, the author explores the nature of the obsession. Secret and otherworldly clues alternate with the story of a fiery Herman who wants to make his fortune at the card table. The secret of success is known to one old woman.

53.
Muscovite Gurov is married and has a daughter and two sons. However, he is not happy in family life and often cheats on his wife. Resting in Yalta, he sees a young lady walking along the embankment with her little dog, and is constantly looking for opportunities to get to know her.

54.
This collection is in some way the culmination of the work that he did throughout his life. The stories were written on the eve of a terrible world war in the context of a collapsing Russian culture. The action of each work concentrates on a love theme.

55.
The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous narrator who reminisces about his youth, in particular his stay in a small town west of the Rhine. Critics consider the hero a classic "extra person" - indecisive and undecided about his place in life.

56.
Four laconic plays, later known as "Little Tragedies", were written at the moment of the rise of creative forces, and their influence cannot be overestimated. Being the author's transcription of plays by Western European authors, "Tragedies" offer readers topical problems.

57.
This story takes place in Europe, in a hedonistic society during the Roaring Twenties. A rich schizophrenic girl falls in love with her psychiatrist. As a result, a whole saga of troubled marriages, love affairs, duels and incest unfolds.

58.
Some scholars distinguish three poems in the work of this author, in which one original idea is embodied. One of them is, of course, Mtsyri. The main character is a 17-year-old monk who was forcibly taken away from his village as a child, and one day he escapes.

59.
A completely young mongrel runs away from her permanent owner and finds herself a new one. It turns out to be an artist who performs in a circus with numbers in which animals participate. Therefore, for a smart little dog, his own separate number is immediately invented.

60.
In this story, among many of its themes, such as Europeanized Russian society, adultery and provincial life, the theme of a woman, or rather, the planning of a murder by a woman, comes to the fore. The title of the piece is a reference to Shakespeare's play.

61. Leo Tolstoy - Fake Coupon
Schoolboy Mitya is in desperate need of money - he needs to repay the debt. Depressed by this situation, he follows the evil advice of his friend, who showed him how to change the denomination of the banknote. This act sets off a chain of events that affects the lives of dozens of other people.

62.
The most outstanding work of Proust, which is known for its length and the theme of involuntary memories. The novel began to take shape as early as 1909. The author continued to work on it until his last illness, which forced him to stop working.

63.
The voluminous poem tells the story of seven peasants who set out to ask various sections of the village population if they are happy. But wherever they went, they were always given an unsatisfactory answer. Of the planned 7-8 parts, the author wrote only half.

64.
The story of the sad life of a young girl who lived in extreme poverty and became an orphan in an instant, but she is adopted by a wealthy family. When she meets her new half-sister, Katya, she instantly falls in love with her and the two soon become inseparable.

65.
The protagonist is a classic Hemingway hero: a violent guy, an underground liquor dealer who smuggles weapons and transports people from Cuba to the Florida Keys. He risks his life to dodge the Coast Guard's bullets and manages to outsmart her.

66.
During a train ride, one of the passengers overhears a conversation going on in the compartment. When one woman argues that marriage should be based on true love, he asks her: what is love? In his opinion, love quickly turns into hatred, and tells his story.

67. Leo Tolstoy - Notes of the marker
The narrator is a simple marker, a person who keeps score and arranges balls on a billiard table. If the game goes well and the players come across not stingy, then he gets a good reward. But one day a very gambling young man appears in the club.

68.
The protagonist is looking for peace in Polissya, which should cheer him up. But in the end he gets one unbearable boredom. But one day, having gone astray, he comes across a hut, where an old woman and her beautiful granddaughter are waiting for him. After such a magical meeting, the hero becomes a frequent guest here.

69.
In the center of attention is a janitor of high stature and powerful physique. He falls in love with a young washerwoman and wants to marry her. But the lady decides differently: the girl goes to the eternally drunk shoemaker. The hero finds his consolation in caring for a small dog.

70.
One evening, the three sisters shared their dreams with each other: what would they do if they became the wives of the king. But the prayers of only the third sister were heard - Tsar Saltan marries her and orders her to give birth to an heir by a certain date. But envious sisters begin to mischief.

"To Kill a Mockingbird". Harper Lee

It must have been extremely easy to write a novel about a white woman-black man rape trial that takes place in the deeply racist South of the United States of America, from the point of view of a little girl, full of too simple solutions and cinematic sentiment. But, fortunately, this is not about Harper Lee's novel " To Kill a Mockingbird". The little girl is an inquisitive and insightful Scout, and her father, who defends the accused, is the immortal Atticus Finch, who became the stronghold of justice in a tired and exhausted town. All this is followed, not simple and not sentimental, but the classic complexity of moral principles, and an endlessly renewable source of wisdom in the realm of nature of human decency.

"1984". George Orwell, 1949
"Nineteen Eighty-Four", George Orwell

The time is 13:00, the date does not matter, the year is not mentioned. Winston Smith, an official at the Ministry of Truth, toils day and night in the service of Big Brother, the remote, falsely benign ruler of this darkly familiar dystopia. Orwell's novel is an essay on every possible way a nation can be humiliated by a government: spiritually, physically, intellectually, through encirclement, torture, surveillance and censorship, to the point where the state can manipulate reality at will. When a beautiful resistance member sways Smith into rebellion, 1984 becomes something more - a strange, tragic, and deeply sad love story. That the novel is as prophetic as it is pessimistic was Orwell's triumph and the misfortune of the century.

"Lord of the Rings". John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1954

"The Lord of the Rings", John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Tolkien

When a house Catholic, a pipe-smoking Oxford professor named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien sat down to write a novel, no one could have imagined that his wild fantasy would create a whole continent inhabited by elves, dwarves, orcs, wizards and walking trees. Tolkien called on his deep knowledge of ancient languages and mythology, as well as his harrowing memories of the Battle of the Somme, to create a 20th-century tale of magic and heroism, misty mountains and mystical forests, virtue and temptation, where a tiny dwarf-like hobbit, Frodo, goes in search of adventure to destroy the Ring of Omnipotence - an evil artifact that can cause the death of all of Middle-earth. As a founding text of the modern fantasy style, The Lord of the Rings also carries with it an extremely dark longing for pre-industrial England, lost forever in the muddy trenches of the First World War.

The Catcher in the Rye". Jerome David Salinger, 1951

"The Catcher in the Rye", J. D. Salinger

No matter how many school teachers of foreign literature try to "domesticate" the novel Jerome Selinger « The Catcher in the Rye” in the classroom, he will never lose his satirical poignancy in his life. When Holden Caulfield finds out he's been expelled from yet another private school, he sneaks out in the middle of the night and goes to New York for a few days, meeting girls, remembering his dead brother, wondering where ducks go in the winter before reporting sad news for parents. Time passes in the throes of complete indifference to the joys of life, changing the boy who has just matured. It is a constant reminder of the sweetness of childhood, the hypocrisy of the adult world, and the strange gap between them.

"The Great Gatsby". Francis Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

There's no better party than Jazz Age multimillionaire Jay Gatsby. No one has a bigger house, or a bigger pool, and no one drives a longer, shinier, more luxurious car. His silk shirts alone make women cry. But who is he? Where is he from? How did he make his fortune? And why does he stand every night on his dock, holding out his hand towards the green lantern that glows on the other side of the bay, opposite his magnificent mansion? The Great Gatsby reveals the empty, tragic heart of a self-made man. This is not just an exciting read about a great loss. This is one of the most typical American novels ever written.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. JK Rowling, 1997

"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", J. K. Rowling

The adventures of a young wizard and his friends and their relationship with the forces of adulthood and evil have managed to sell over 350 million books in 65 languages. The Harry Potter phenomenon has its detractors, but the success of books with special "adult" covers that allow you to read the novel without embarrassment on the subway and trains speaks for itself...

"The little Prince". Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

"Le Petit Prince", Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

50 years before Harry Potter, and even 10 years before writing " The Catcher in the Rye”, was The Little Prince, a pamphlet Antoine de Saint-Exupery directed against adults and their rational thinking. The work is saturated with extreme tenderness, poetry and some simple but deep human wisdom. Naivety, which is noticeable at first glance, actually hides amazing, subtle humor, as well as sadness and touching.

"The Grapes of Wrath". John Steinbeck, 1938

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Before the Dust Bowl hurricanes had calmed down, Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, a novel about a family of impoverished Okies, the Joads, who head west in pursuit of the mirage of the good life from their devastated Midwestern farm to California. The Jodes find only the bitterness, poverty and oppression of the migrating farm laborers living in the Hoover Villages, but their unstoppable strength in the face of the adversity of an entire continent makes Steinbeck's epic so much more than a story of unfortunate events. The book is a written record of that time, as well as an invariable monument to human perseverance.

"451 degrees Fahrenheit". Ray Bradbury, 1953

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

A classic of world science fiction is Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 (the flash point of paper), about firemen who start fires instead of extinguishing them, about books forbidden to read, and about people who almost forgot what it means being human…

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967

"Cien años de soledad", Gabriel García Márquez

Novel Gabriel Garcia Marquez « One hundred years of solitude"- this is the greatest work, the most characteristic of the direction of magical realism. This impassioned, humorous story of Macondo and his family, the Buendía family, has a certain magnetic force of myth.

"Brave new world." Aldous Huxley, 1932

"Brave New World", Aldous Huxley

A classic example of science fiction, which is placed alongside George Orwell's 1984. Back in 1932, Aldous Huxley managed to predict such modern phenomena as cloning, growing embryos in test tubes, totalitarianism, neo-fascism and its artificial obligatory happiness, materialistic globalization and soft-ideology.

"Gone With the Wind". Margaret Mitchell, 1936

"Gone with the Wind", Margaret Mitchell

It's one of the best-selling books of all time, but that doesn't make for an impressive sugar book cocktail. Margaret Mitchell so great. A powerful, original and compelling historical novel about the macho Scarlett O'Hara, the roguish Rhett Butler, and the romantic, boundlessly beautiful Ashley Oulx, in a world ravaged by the cataclysm of civil war. As the quintessence of the English novel is Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, so the quintessence of the American novel is the novel gone With the Wind". The book is tremendously readable, as love stories have never been more triangular. But it is also a distinctive interpretation of one of the main American mythologies - the disappearance, in blood and dust, of the great old South.

"Lord of the Flies". William Golding, 1954
"Lord of the Flies", William Golding

If the novel had been written in the 19th century, it would have been about a joyful, whimsical and fantastic Neverland created by boys. But in Golding's version, the ostentatious childish purity quickly disappears in the absence of adults, turning the boys into two warring tribes, one led by the righteous Ralph and his asthmatic bosom friend Piggy, the second under the leadership of the former leader of the choir, Jack. Golding traces the fall of this new Eden with relentless, meticulous care and total psychological clarity. And in the process, he mercilessly debunks myths and clichés about childish innocence.

"Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade". Kurt Vonnegut, 1969

"Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut may still be a cult writer, but he deserves full canon awards for his kaleidoscopic jigsaw puzzle about Billy Pilgrim, the man who "fell out of time." The Pilgrim jumps helplessly from decade to decade, living through the episodes of his life without any sequence, not excluding his own death, his capture by aliens from the planet Tralfamador, and his traumatic service during World War II, where he survived the bombing of Dresden. " Massacre number five is a cynical novel, but beneath the bitterness of black humor lies a desperate, painfully honest attempt to come face to face with the heinous crimes of the 20th century.

"Lolita". Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

"Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov

The novel was born in agony. Nabokov practically burned the manuscript halfway through completion, and his first publisher was a French publisher specializing in pornographic literature. But "Lolita" has become the greatest bestseller, the most unlike the American classics. The main character named Humbert Humbert is a pedophile. He is a highly cultured and endearingly ironic man who hates himself as much as a human being can, but he loves, and can only love, pretty little girls, whom he calls "nymphets." Lolita is the story of Humbert's affair with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze. Their story is about as disgusting and unacceptable as one can imagine, but Humbert's voice, an endlessly resourceful stream of evil, understandable curses, raises it to the level of a tragic, intricate epic.

"Above the Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kesey, 1962

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Ken Kesey

When Kesey decided to tackle the hypocrisy, cruelty, and forced obedience of modern life, he unearthed his personal experience as a research subject in a mental hospital. In The Cuckoo's Nest, rampant patient Randle Patrick McMurphy struggles with the cold and unfriendly, power-crazed sister Mildred Ratched in an attempt to free, or at least breathe some life into, the crushed and terrified patients she puts on airs for. watching the silent, stony-looking narrator, Chief Bromden. Containing these two allegories of individualism and heartbreaking psychological drama, the novel " Above the cuckoo's nest manages to cheer up without giving the slightest chance to excessive sentimentality.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Douglas Adams, 1979

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams

Originally broadcast on Radio 4, this quote-worthy comedy about the ill-fated adventures of a simple Englishman and his alien friend is a prime example of how science fiction can be smart and funny at the same time.

"Outsider". Albert Camus, 1942

"L" Étranger, Albert Camus

Everyone remembers how at school they were diligently forced to read and understand the works of Albert Camus. Then it was almost impossible to do this, and coercion could cause rejection of the French writer for life. But the story "The Outsider" is really worth re-reading now. The scorched despair of Camus's intelligent humanism and his clear manner of presentation are simply inimitable.

"American tragedy". Theodor Dreiser, 1925

"An American Tragedy", Theodore Dreiser

Clyde Griffiths is an ambitious young man. He is in love with a rich girl, but he gets pregnant by a poor girl, Roberta Alden, who works with him in his uncle's factory. One day, he takes Roberta for a boat ride on the lake with the intention of killing her. From now on, his fate is sealed. But by this point, Dreiser had already made it clear that Clyde's fate had been predetermined even before that by the cruelty and cynicism of society. Dreiser's usual criticism, line by line, makes him the weakest American novelist. He uses a plumbing style of writing, artfully connecting each sentence. But by the end of the work, he will build them into a powerful plumbing, sending some very significant meaning through it.

"The Old Man and the Sea". Ernest Hemingway, 1952

"The Old Man and the Sea", Ernest Hemingway

For a long time no one should explain that the story "The Old Man and the Sea" is a modern classic that brought Ernest Hemingway Nobel Prize. And the main idea in the story of a simple fisherman Santiago, embodying the difficult story of a man forced to fight for life every day and at the same time trying to coexist in harmony with the world, has long become winged, acting as the motto of many admirers of literature, and not only: “Man is not built to endure defeat. Man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated."

The Ministry of Education and Science is completing work on creating a list of books required for extracurricular reading by Russian schoolchildren. The idea of such a list was proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the article "Russia: a national question", which was published in January of this year. St. Petersburg State University, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science, compiled a recommended list, which included more than two hundred works. As a result of Internet voting, one hundred books on the history, culture and literature of the peoples of the Russian Federation were selected from them, acquaintance with which, according to the project coordinators, should contribute to the national self-identification of the younger generation and the preservation of the national cultural canon.

“In some of the leading American universities in the 1920s, there was a movement to study the Western cultural canon. Every self-respecting student had to read one hundred books according to a specially formed list. In some US universities, this tradition has been preserved to this day. Our nation has always been a reader. Let's conduct a survey of our cultural authorities and form a list of one hundred books that every graduate of the Russian school will have to read. Do not memorize at school, but read on your own. And let's make the final exam essay on the topics read. Or, at least, we will give young people the opportunity to show their knowledge and their worldview at olympiads and competitions.

V.V. Putin, "Russia: the national question"

Authoritative opinion

The idea of creating a list of books recommended for independent reading was instantly picked up not only by cultural officials - the possible composition of the list was widely discussed by writers, film directors, film and theater actors. Most cultural figures turned their eyes towards the classics - most often the names of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Gogol, Chekhov, Bulgakov, poets of the Silver Age sounded. Of the two thousandth writers, they remembered Dmitry Bykov, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Zakhar Prilepin, Alexei Ivanov.

The contemporaries themselves also actively joined the discussion. Permian writer and screenwriter Aleksey Ivanov recommended adding books by Vladislav Krapivin, Denis Dragunsky, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, adventure novels by Dumas, and fiction by Orkhan Pamuk to the list. Dmitry Bykov would certainly include Emile Zola in his list. "It needs to be read - especially for us, especially now, because the picture of the life of the second empire is extremely similar to post-Soviet Russia," the writer emphasized.

List and anti-list

Despite the fact that the majority of representatives of the writing community reacted positively to the idea of creating a single mandatory list of literature, there were those who did not find this idea successful. Supernatsbest laureate Zakhar Prilepin noted that it would be more interesting for him to talk about the literature that modern schoolchildren should not read: “With all due respect to Solzhenitsyn, I believe that the Gulag Archipelago should be excluded from the list of the school curriculum and the list of recommended literature, like any other literature, unequivocally negatively covering the mythology of the country and unequivocally interpreting the history of the 20th century, as well as any other century. Books positively elucidating the activities of the party and the government of our time should not be on the list either. But these, thank God, have not yet been written.

The widow of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who heads his foundation, called the idea of creating a list of recommended literature common to all as absurd. From her point of view, the volume of compulsory literature must be provided by the school curriculum, and everything beyond this must be provided by the family. And the musician Andrei Makarevich cited as an example his school teacher of literature, who believed that any person of average intellectual development should know by heart a hundred verses, and it doesn’t matter which ones - from “A Christmas tree was born in the forest ...” to the works of Mayakovsky or Brodsky. “The important thing is that a person knows these hundred verses, which means that he already has a fairly developed head and some kind of aesthetic consciousness,” Makarevich argues. “And if a person reads a hundred books, then not everything will be a garbage dump there - something will turn out to be important.”

New concept

After the list was formed, many questions arose. How can an epic and a story be treated equally? Is it possible to list multiple works by the same author, or should each writer be represented by just one text? Include only works of fiction in the list, or allocate space for historical and non-fiction publications? And, perhaps, the main question: how will these hundred books for additional reading compare with the list of literature that is mandatory included in the school curriculum?

Representatives of the authorities, the scientific and library community had to look for answers to these and many other questions: each of the regions of the country proposed its own version of the list, and the formation of a single list was entrusted to the experts of St. Petersburg State University. They excluded works that are included in the list of compulsory literature, weeded out foreign and regional authors. The rest will be decided by online voting. At the same time, in the final list, it is necessary to maintain a balance between modern literature and classical, domestic and foreign, to provide a variety of aesthetic and life experiences that readers will draw from these books, as well as a variety of genre and stylistic, which is necessary for the development of language flair.

During the implementation of the project, the very concept of the list underwent changes: the Ministry of Education decided not to limit itself to 100 books - in each region they will be supplemented by 30 regional titles, and for high school students they will include another 20 additional books chosen by schoolchildren on their own. As a result, the final list can be expanded to 150 works.

"Golden Shelf"

In itself, the idea of creating a mandatory book list is not new: even Leo Tolstoy compiled the "Circle of Reading" - books that should be read by every person who lives in Russia. And Joseph Brodsky, during his teaching career at Mount Holyoke American College, prepared for his students a "List of books that everyone should read."

Today, compiling lists of required literature can be considered a tradition: they regularly appear on various sites dedicated to books and reading. Many media, both domestic and foreign, also consider it necessary to present their version of the “golden hundred” to the attention of the public. There are dozens of versions of such lists for every genre and age category. And each of them inevitably bears the imprint of the personal assessment of the compilers, who have not only the literary taste necessary for this, but also their own predilections. In this sense, the creation of an absolutely universal list, even for a limited category of readers, seems to be as exciting as it is utopian.

We will be able to find out what exactly the compilers have selected from the millionth literary heritage created by mankind over many centuries: the project should be implemented before the end of 2012.

1. Francois Rabelais. "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1532-1553).

2. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. "The cunning hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" (1605-1615).

3. Daniel Defoe. "The Life and Wonderful Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719).

4. Jonathan Swift. Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships (1726).

5. Abbe Prevost. "The Story of the Chevalier de Grieux and Manon Lescaut" (1731).

6. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. "The Suffering of Young Werther" (1774).

7. Lawrence Stern. "The Life and Beliefs of Tristram Shandy" (1759-1767).

8. Choderlos de Laclos. "Dangerous Liaisons" (1782).

9. Marquis de Sade. "120 days of Sodom" (1785).

10. Jan Potocki. "Manuscript found in Zaragoza" (1804).

11 Mary Shelley "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" (1818).

12. Charles Maturin. "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820).

13. Honore de Balzac. "Shagreen leather" (1831).

14. Victor Hugo. "Notre Dame Cathedral" (1831).

15. Stendhal. "Red and black" (1830-1831).

16. Alexander Pushkin. "Eugene Onegin" (1823-1833).

17. Alfred de Musset. "Confessions of a Son of the Century" (1836).

18. Charles Dickens. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837).

19. Mikhail Lermontov. "A Hero of Our Time" (1840).

20. Nikolai Gogol. "Dead Souls" (1842).

21. Alexandre Dumas. "Three Musketeers" (1844).

22. William Thackeray. "Vanity Fair" (1846).

23. Herman Melville. "Moby Dick" (1851).

24. Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary" (1856).

25. Ivan Goncharov. "Oblomov" (1859).

26. Ivan Turgenev. "Fathers and Sons" (1862).

28. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment" (1866).

29. Leo Tolstoy. "War and Peace" (1867-1869).

30. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Idiot" (1868-1869).

31. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. "Venus in furs" (1870).

32. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Demons" (1871-1872).

33. Mark Twain. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876) / "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884).

34. Leo Tolstoy. "Anna Karenina" (1878).

35. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)

36. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. "Lord Golovlyovs" (1880-1883).

37. Oscar Wilde. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891)

38. HG Wells. "Time Machine" (1895).

39. Bram Stoker. "Dracula" (1897).

40. Jack London. "Sea Wolf" (1904)

41. Fedor Sologub. "Small Demon" (1905).

42. Andrey Bely. "Petersburg" (1913-1914).

43. Gustav Meyrink. "Golem" (1914).

44. Evgeny Zamyatin. "We" (1921).

45. James Joyce. "Ulysses" (1922).

46. Ilya Ehrenburg. "The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito" (1922).

47. Yaroslav Gashek. "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik during the World War" (1921-1923).

48. Mikhail Bulgakov. "White Guard" (1924).

49. Thomas Mann. "Magic Mountain" (1924).

50. Franz Kafka. "Process" (1925).

51. Francis Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" (1925).

52. Alexander Green. "Running on the waves" (1928).

53. Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. "Twelve Chairs" (1928).

54. Andrey Platonov. "Chevengur" (1927-1929).

55. William Faulkner. "The Sound and the Fury" (1929).

56. Ernest Hemingway. "Bye weapons!" (1929).

57. Louis Ferdinand Celine. "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932).

58. Aldous Huxley. "Oh Brave New World" (1932).

59. Lao She. "Notes on the Cat City" (1933).

60. Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer (1934).

61. Maxim Gorky. "Life of Klim Samgin" (1925-1936).

62. Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" (1936).

63. Erich Maria Remarque. "Three comrades" (1936-1937).

64. Vladimir Nabokov. "Gift" (1938-1939).

65. Mikhail Bulgakov. "Master and Margarita" (1929-1940).

66. Mikhail Sholokhov. "Quiet Don" (1927-1940).

67. Robert Musil "Man without properties" (1930-1943).

68. Hermann Hesse. "The Glass Bead Game" (1943).

69. Veniamin Kaverin. "Two Captains" (1938-1944).

70. Boris Vian. "Foam of days" (1946).

71. Thomas Mann. "Doctor Faustus" (1947).

72. Albert Camus. "Plague" (1947).

73. George Orwell. "1984" (1949).

74. Jerome D. Salinger. "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951).

75. Ray Bradbury. "451 Fahrenheit" (1953).

76. John R. R. Tolkien. "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955).

77. Vladimir Nabokov. "Lolita" (1955; 1967, Russian version).

78. Boris Pasternak. "Doctor Zhivago" (1945-1955).

79. Jack Kerouac "On the road" (1957).

80. William Burroughs. "Naked Lunch" (1959).

81. Witold Gombrowicz. "Pornography" (1960).

82. Kobo Abe. "Woman in the Sands" (1962).

83. Julio Cortazar. "Playing Hopscotch" (1963).

84. Nikolay Nosov. "Dunno on the Moon" (1964-1965).

85. John Fowles Magus (1965).

86. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967)

87. Philip K. Dick. "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968).

88. Yuri Mamleev. "Connecting Rods" (1968).

89. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "In the first circle" (1968).

90. Kurt Vonnegut "Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade" (1969).

91. Venedikt Erofeev. "Moscow - Petushki" (1970).

92. Sasha Sokolov "School for Fools" (1976).

93. Andrey Bitov. "Pushkin House" (1971).

94. Eduard Limonov. "It's me - Eddie" (1979).

95. Vasily Aksyonov. "Island of Crimea" (1979).

96. Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1984).

97. Vladimir Voinovich. "Moscow 2042" (1987).

98. Vladimir Sorokin. "Romance" (1994).

99. Victor Pelevin. "Chapaev and Void" (1996).

100. Vladimir Sorokin. "Blue fat" (1999).

Anna Karenina. Lev Tolstoy

The greatest love story of all time. A story that has not left the stage, filmed countless times - and still has not lost the boundless charm of passion - a destructive, destructive, blind passion - but all the more bewitching with its grandeur.