Unique to Émile Zola's characteristic writing style , 'The Dream' feels like a fairy tale among the rest of 'Rougon-Macquart' series. It reveals the story of the orphan Angélique M ...

Gervaise and Coupeau are happily married and through hard work they manage to advance in society. Until Coupeau is injured and takes to idleness, gluttony and eventually to drink. ...

Silk dresses, sparkling jewellery and finest textiles: the glamour of the 19th century French department store can make anyone's head spin. When the 20-year-old Denise Baudu comes ...

Mathieu Froment lives in the suburbs of Paris and travels to the city every day to work. He and his wife Marianne have a loving relationship and an enormous amount of children. 'Fr ...

Twenty years before the French Revolution. The Monarchy has already started to lose some of its supporters, even though young Marie Antoinette has just married the King Louis XVI. ...

Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls is one of the best-known pieces of 19th-century Russian literature. Chichikov is a mysterious man, who arrives at a small town with a strange plan ...

The short story "Konovalov" (1897) is an example of Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical writing, depicting the suicide of a quiet prisoner, Konovalov, whom Gorky decides to immortalize ...

Listed among the most beloved Russian plays, 'The Inspector General' is a vivid portrayal of human greed and foolishness. Savagely criticizing the political corruption of Imperial ...

With his sense of humor and ability to observe, Nikolai Gogol presents the world with stories of little people: the weak and fragile people who try to hold on to life in the gloomy ...

"A most extraordinary thing happened in St. Petersburg on the twenty-fifth of March." The opening lines of "The Nose", one of Gogol’s best-known stories, and quite possibly the mos ...

In Nikolai Gogol's short story 'May Night, or the Drowned Maiden,' a single night ends up changing the lives of many. Young Levko is the son of the head of a Ukrainian village and ...

How far will a man go for love? The short story 'St. John's Eve' by Nikolai Gogol from the 19th century recounts the sinister events that transpired in a poor hamlet generations ag ...

"The Old World Landowners" is a short story written in 1835. It is the first tale in the "Mirgorod" collection by Nikolai Gogol. The story is a vivid representation of the old-fash ...

'The Fair at Sorochyntsi' by Nikolai Gogol is a short story set in a Ukrainian village in 1800. A man travels with his daughter and wife to a fair to sell some of their belongings. ...

She is beautiful, charismatic and destroys every man who dares to pursue her. Before the character of femme fatale was coined in American cinema, Émile Zola captured the seductive ...

Dangers and romance intertwine in one in the adventure novel "Martin Paz" from 1852. The Indian chief Martin Paz falls in love with a girl named Sarah. Sarah’s father, Samuel, has ...

What about an unexpected two years’ vacation on a desert island? It may sound appealing from nowadays perspective. But when a marooned ship drifts to sea with nobody but a group of ...

Jules Verne’s "The Vanished Diamond" from 1884 takes us to the South African diamond fields. Victor Cyprien is a mining engineer who falls in love with Alice, the daughter of the r ...

"Michael Strogoff I" is an adventure novel by Jules Verne from 1876. It consists of two parts and it tells the story of the courier of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Michael Strogoff ...

"Michael Strogoff II" is the second part of Jules Verne’s adventure novel from 1876. It tells the story of the courier of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Michael Strogoff. There is a ...

This classic novel about adventure, courage and determination takes the reader on an exciting sea voyage around the world. Engaging and entertaining, "In Search of the Castaways" f ...

Dr. Ox wants to introduce a new gas lighting system in a small Flemish town. Free of charge. However something does not add up. Solely because Dr. Ox’s goal is not as philanthropic ...

M. de Rênal is the mayor of a provincial town named Verrières, who hires Julien Sorel as a private teacher for his child. Sorel desires to become a real man and follow the steps of ...

Teeming with dark humour, supernatural elements, and hard-to-believe situations, Nikolai Gogol’s "Collected Stories" is a highest form of short story fiction. With stories like "Th ...

A short novel about the final hours of a man sentenced to death, "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" can be read as a social critique and revolt against the institution of the death ...