The Russian novel remains a subject of enduring interest for scholars, students, and general audiences. Russian novels were initially influenced by the parallel traditions of novel-writing in Britain, France, and Germany, but the Russian novel exists as its own tradition and asserts its own identity as a literary form.
To read a Russian novel often requires the fortitude to traverse many hundreds of pages and to consider profound political, philosophical, and metaphysical questions. The best-known Russian novels are also compulsively readable, providing a fascinating window into Russian culture and society at different historical periods. Readers of Russian novels marvel at the fictional world-building of innovative writers who created compelling characters and settings, realized through brilliant storytelling and stylistic virtuosity.
Major Russian novelists such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Nabokov continue to be popular and to carry intellectual prestige. But the tradition of the Russian novel extends well beyond these familiar authors and their works. This Oxford Handbook draws from a valuable tradition of critical commentary dating back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and builds upon important earlier scholarship but significantly updates our understanding of the Russian novel: showcasing newer interpretive paradigms, considering works outside the canon, and extending the story of the Russian novel through Soviet times and up to the varied literary landscape of the present. The chapters also explore an increasingly expansive view of what constitutes a Russian novel, part of ongoing efforts to communicate our evolving understanding of the tradition.
