Shelf: On the Major Works of Russian Literature

This book includes articles written and compiled as part of the project "Shelf". Launched in 2017, the project aimed to identify the most important works of Russian literature. To achieve this, a large community of experts formed a list of 108 works that have left a mark on history, expanded the possibilities of literature, influenced the development of language, thought, and society, revealed something new about the world and humanity, and entered the Russian literary canon. These are novels, stories, plays, poems, literary memoirs — from "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" to the novel "Chapayev and Void." For each of these works, the authors aimed to write clearly and accessibly, relying on extensive scholarly and critical literature, placing each in a larger literary context and discussing other texts that influenced it and that it influenced.

The first two volumes of this edition include 60 articles — about Russian literature from Ancient Rus to 1917.