Life and Fate: Russian Literature from Pushkin to Grossman

Module code: EN3216

This module explores Russian literature from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Starting with Pushkin and Lermontov, we will move later into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to consider Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Along the way, we will also encounter less familiar women writers of the Russian Empire and the early Soviet state, such as Teffi and female soldier, Maria Bochkareva. The course will culminate with Vasily Grossman's Second World War-set masterpiece, and its devastating engagement with totalitarianism, the battlefield, and the Holocaust.