An author’s fascinating or salacious backstory can be key to a book’s allure (and marketing campaign). But the taste of the reading public isn’t infinitely flexible, and this is nowhere… Read more »

As the situation in Ukraine turns ever more fragile and troubling, writers on all sides of the conflict have come forward and taken official positions in a series of letters… Read more »

As the 2014 Winter Olympics head into their second week, all eyes are on the sporting events and political controversies unfolding now in Sochi. Attracting less attention is Russian Prime… Read more »

Supplementing my fascination with the canine, hotel, and bobsledding shenanigans in Sochi and of Pussy Riot’s Brooklyn appearance, I’ve been dipping into two Russian Sherlock Holmes small-screen adaptations, as well as… Read more »

Last week in the land of Dostoyevsky and vodka, an enduring debate reopened when a 67-year-old man asserted his belief that “the only real literature is prose.” Unfortunately for him,… Read more »

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s collection of books and manuscripts, which contains 250,000 published volumes—the vast majority of which are in Hebrew and Yiddish—is located at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New… Read more »

In response to Russia’s laws against the distribution of gay “propaganda,” and in preparation for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, anti-discrimination group FCKH8 has announced that it will publish… Read more »

10. Here is how it will end: you will be on a train. You will be walking down a street, in St. Petersburg. You will be riding a red horse.… Read more »

Leo Tolstoy lived several lifetimes in one, and filled them all with writing. So when his great-great-granddaughter, Fyokla Tolstaya, initiated a project to put his complete works online, free and… Read more »

At The Chronicle of Higher Education, Holly Case has taken a close look at Joseph Stalin in one of his lesser known roles: editor and wielder of a big blue… Read more »