21 Novels set in the Stalin era

The Betrayal is a 2010 historical novel by English writer Helen Dunmore. It is set in Leningrad in 1952, ten years after the Siege of Leningrad, and takes place during political repression in the Soviet Union and the plot against doctors in the Stalin era. The book was longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the 2011 Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Orwell Prize.

Between Shades of Gray, a New York Times Best Seller, is the debut novel of American novelist Ruta Sepetys. It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother, and the journey they take to a labor camp in Siberia. It was nominated for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal and has been translated into more than 27 languages.

Breaking Stalin's Nose is a 2011 children's historical novel written and illustrated by Eugene Yelchin. It is set in Moscow during the Stalin era and shows a boy's disillusion with his hero Stalin after his father is unjustly arrested. The novel was given a 2012 Newbery Honor award for excellence in children's literature along with numerous other awards and distinctions.

Tatiana and Alexander is a romance novel written by Paullina Simons and the second book in the Bronze Horseman Trilogy. The novel continues the story of Tatiana Metanova and her husband Alexander Belov. Plot:

The Bronze Horseman is a romance novel written by Paullina Simons and the first book in the Bronze Horseman Trilogy.

Child 44 is a thriller novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith. This is the first novel in a trilogy featuring former MGB Agent Leo Demidov, who investigates a series of gruesome child murders in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

City of Thieves is a 2008 historical fiction novel by David Benioff. It is, in part, a coming of age story set in the World War II Siege of Leningrad. It follows the adventures of two youths as they desperately search for a dozen eggs at the behest of a Soviet NKVD officer, a task which takes them far behind enemy lines.

Darkness at Noon is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create.

The Faculty of Useless Knowledge is a novel by Soviet writer Yury Dombrovsky about the fate of the Russian intellectual in the era of Stalin's repressions, written in 1964-1975. It completes a kind of dialogue begun by the novel "The Guardian of Antiquities". The novel was dedicated to Dombrovsky's "New World" editor Anna Samoilovna Berser and published in the West ; according to the popular version, this publication was the cause of Dombrovsky's death. In the USSR, the first publication took place in 1988 in the "Novy Mir".

The Foundation Pit is a gloomy symbolic and semi-satirical novel by Andrei Platonov. The plot of the novel concerns a group of workers living in the early Soviet Union. They attempt to dig out a huge foundation pit on the base of which a gigantic house will be built for the country's proletarians. The workers dig each day but slowly cease to understand the meaning of their work. The enormous foundation pit sucks out all of their physical and mental energy.

A Gentleman in Moscow is a 2016 novel by Amor Towles. It is his second novel, published five years after his New York Times best seller, Rules of Civility (2011).

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English, and French, the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner. In Russian, the term GULAG (ГУЛАГ) is an acronym for Main Directorate of Camps.

Hannibal Rising is a novel by American author Thomas Harris, published in 2006. It is a prequel to his three previous books featuring his most famous character, the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The novel was released with an initial printing of at least 1.5 million copies and met with a mixed critical response. Audiobook versions have also been released, with Harris reading the text. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 2007, directed by Peter Webber. Producer Dino De Laurentis implied around the time of the novel's release that he had coerced Harris into writing it under threat of losing control over the Hannibal Lecter character, accounting for the perceived diminished quality from Harris' previous books.

In the First Circle is a novel by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, released in 1968. A more complete version of the book was published in English in 2009.

The Master and Margarita is a novel by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940 during Stalin's regime. A censored version was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer's death. The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and editions.

Music of a Life is a 2001 novella by the French writer Andreï Makine. A tale of Soviet oppression, it tells the story of a talented Russian piano player who has to abandon his career right before his first concert, flees to the countryside and adopts the identity of a dead soldier.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir. The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s and describes a single day in the life of ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

Sapphire Skies is a 2014 historical romance by Belinda Alexandra. It is about Lily, an Australian working in Moscow, who discovers the story behind Natalya Azarova, a night witch who disappeared during World War II.

The Thaw is a short novel by Ilya Ehrenburg first published in the spring 1954 issue of Novy Mir. It coined the name for the Khrushchev Thaw, the period of liberalization following the 1953 death of Stalin. The novel marked a break both from Ehrenburg's earlier purely pro-Soviet work, and from previous ideas about socialist realism.

Zuleikha is a debut novel written in 2015 by the Russian author Guzel Yakhina. It describes the lives of various people, including the titular protagonist, struggling to survive in exile in Siberia from 1930 to 1946.