This is the first book on Andrei Bitov, one of contemporary Russia's most original writers. It plots his evolution from his early publications of the post-Stalin years to his mature masterpieces of the glasnost era. Ellen Chances assesses his place both in the Russian literary tradition from Pushkin onwards, and as part of a broader, international cultural heritage including Dickens, Fellini, and Proust. She explores his themes, from the psychological effects of Stalin on Soviet society to universal questions such as the human being's relationship with nature, history and culture, and discovers in his deeply philosophical and intensely psychological writings an innovative methodology, 'ecological prose', that goes beyond modernist and post-modernist fragmentation in search of the wholeness of life.

Assessing the relevance of Tolstoy's thought and teachings for the current day, Tolstoy and His Problems: Views from the Twenty-First Century is a collection of essays by a group of Tolstoy specialists who are leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences. In the broadest sense—with essays on a variety of issues that occupied Tolstoy, such as nihilism, mysticism, social theory, religion, Judaism, education, opera, and Shakespeare—the volume offers a fresh evaluation of Tolstoy's program to reform the ways we live, work, commune with nature and art, practice spirituality, exchange ideas and knowledge, become educated, and speak and think about history and social change.