Read The Idiot

A spiteful clerk in a Petersburg basement argues with everyone; the first existentialist novel.

Three brothers, a murdered father and the Grand Inquisitor; Dostoevsky's last novel.

A married woman, a cavalry officer and a train; "all happy families are alike".

Dostoevsky's tense moral descent of a guilty student (1866).

Bazarov the nihilist visits the country estate of his friend's family; Turgenev's generation gap.

Humbert Humbert's road trip with a 12-year-old and the most beautiful prose about the worst thing.

A 999-line poem and the mad commentary of the man who stole it; Nabokov's puzzle novel.

Peter the Great’s "Russian Versailles" with its cascade of gilded fountains.