Historical

We are not makers of history. We are made by history

Three Man

Maksim Gorky

Three Man or Three of Them is a 1901 novel by Maksim Gorky. The plot concerns Ilya Lunyev, a boy from an urban slum, who enters the middle-class milieu only to be disillusioned to find the same moral corruption  

Les Miserables Extended

Victor Hugo

The story begins in 1815 in Digne, as the peasant Jean Valjean, just released from 19 years' imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon—five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts&mdash...

The Daughter of Captain (Commandant)

Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

Pyotr Andreyich Grinyov (the narrative is conducted on his behalf) is the only surviving child of a retired army officer. When Pyotr turns 17, his father sends him into military service in Orenburg. En route Pyotr gets lost in a blizzard, but is resc...

Taras Bulba and Other Tales

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

Taras Bulba's two sons, Ostap and Andriy, return home from an Orthodox seminary in Kyiv. Ostap is the more adventurous, whereas Andriy has deeply romantic feelings of an introvert. While in Kyiv, he fell in love with a young Polish noble girl, the da...

Sevastopol

Lev Tolstoy

In Sevastopol in December, Tolstoy uses second person narrative (with the pronoun 'you') in an introductory tour of life in Sevastopol. The detailed tour is arguably similar to one Tolstoy may have been given upon arrival in Sevastopol in November, 1...

The Grand Inquisitor

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The tale is told by Ivan with brief interruptive questions by Alyosha. In the tale, Christ comes back to Earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition. He performs a number of miracles (echoing miracles from the Gospels). The people recognize him a...

The People of the Abyss

Jack London

Jack London takes a decision: In 1902, he goes to the east side of London, the capital of Great Britain, known as the Land of Never Set, and there, disguised as an ordinary poor person, he examines the conditions of the time.  The novel deals wi...

Ten Years in Washington

Mary Clemmer

From 1866 to 1869, Ames resided in Washington, D.C. doing regular work in the way of "Women's Letters from Washington" for the New York Independent. In the spring of 1866, Ames wrote from Washington her first letter to the Independent. From then on,...

Ninety Three

Victor Hugo

The year is 1793. In Brittany during the Royalist insurrection of the Chouannerie, a troop of "Blues" (soldiers of the French Republic) encounter in the bocage Michelle Fléchard, a peasant woman, and her three young children, who are fleeing f...