European classics and fairy tales

Russian, French, German, Spanish and Italian classics plus the fairy tales everyone grows up with.

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• Aesop's Fables: Who Aesop Was, Where the Stories Came From, and the Morals Still in Our Language

  Aesop's Fables are short animal stories with a moral, credited to a 6th-century BC Greek storyteller. Who Aesop was and how the fables spread.

• Anna Karenina for First-Time Readers: Two Love Stories, One Railway and Tolstoy's Russia

  Anna Karenina is Tolstoy's 1878 novel that sets Anna's doomed affair with Vronsky beside Levin's search for meaning. Plot, characters and themes.

• Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan: A First-Timer's Guide to Dumas's The Three Musketeers

  The three musketeers are Athos, Porthos and Aramis; d'Artagnan is the young Gascon who joins them. Plot, ending, history and themes of the 1844 novel.

• Balloons, Submarines and Eighty Days: How Jules Verne Turned Science Into Adventure

  Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist whose Extraordinary Voyages mixed real science with adventure and helped shape science fiction.

• Goethe Beyond Faust: The Poet, Minister and Scientist Who Shaped the German Language

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) wrote Werther and Faust, ran a duchy's affairs, studied plants and colour, and shaped German. His life and works.

• Hans Christian Andersen's Life Story: From a Poor Boy in Odense to the Little Mermaid and the Ugly Duckling

  Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was a Danish writer whose 156 fairy tales, from The Little Mermaid to The Ugly Duckling, reached over 125 languages.

• Heidi Beyond the Anime: Johanna Spyri's Alpine Novel of Homesickness, Faith and a Grandfather Won Back

  Spyri's Heidi (1880–81) is quieter and more religious than the 1974 anime: a homesick orphan, a bitter grandfather, a friend who walks.

• How Does The Hunchback of Notre-Dame End? Victor Hugo's Novel, Not the Disney Version

  In Hugo's 1831 novel, Esmeralda is hanged, Quasimodo throws Frollo from the cathedral, and two skeletons are found together. The plot and the real ending.

• Madame Bovary and the Danger of Reading Too Many Romances: Flaubert's Scandalous First Novel

  Madame Bovary (1856–57) is Flaubert's novel of a doctor's wife who chases romance and luxury into debt. Plot, characters, the 1857 trial, legacy.

• Nine Circles, Seven Terraces and One Last Vision: Walking Through Dante's Divine Comedy

  Dante's Divine Comedy follows the poet through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the year 1300. Structure, guides, story, meaning and its legacy.

• Pierre, Natasha and Andrei Through 1812: A Reader's Map of Tolstoy's War and Peace

  War and Peace follows five Russian noble families, above all Pierre, Natasha and Andrei, through Napoleon's wars and 1812. Characters, plot, ending.

• Pinocchio Before Disney: Collodi's Hanged Puppet, a Turquoise-Haired Fairy and a Much Harder Lesson

  Yes, Collodi's 1883 Pinocchio is darker than Disney's: the puppet kills the cricket, is hanged by thieves and turns into a donkey. Plot, themes, legacy.

• Poet, Exile, National Hero: The Many Lives of Victor Hugo

  Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a French Romantic poet, novelist and politician, author of Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Misérables and a fierce campaigner.

• The Brothers Grimm Were Scholars First: How Jacob and Wilhelm Collected Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and More

  Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were German scholars who collected Snow White, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel. How they gathered the tales, and how they changed them.

• The Brothers Karamazov Unpacked: Three Sons, One Murdered Father and the Question of God

  The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's last novel (1879–80), is a murder mystery about faith, doubt and guilt. Plot, the brothers, the Grand Inquisitor.

• The Count of Monte Cristo Plot and Ending: Dumas's Revenge Novel in Plain English

  A wronged sailor escapes prison, finds a hidden treasure and returns as a count to punish the men who betrayed him. Plot, ending, characters and themes.

• Was Dostoevsky Really Sentenced to Death? The Mock Execution Behind Crime and Punishment

  Yes. In 1849 Dostoevsky faced a firing squad before a last-minute pardon, then served four years in a Siberian prison camp. How it shaped his novels.

• What Is Don Quixote About? Cervantes' Knight Who Fought Windmills

  Don Quixote is Cervantes' novel about a man who reads so many chivalry books that he becomes a knight. Here is the story, its meaning and the phrases it left.

• What Is Leo Tolstoy Famous For? The Count Who Wrote War and Peace and Then Questioned Everything

  Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then turned against wealth, war and the Church, and inspired Gandhi. The life behind the great novels.

• What Is Les Misérables About? Victor Hugo's Novel Beyond the Musical

  Les Misérables is Victor Hugo's 1862 novel about ex-convict Jean Valjean, the inspector who hunts him and the poor of Paris up to the 1832 uprising.

• What Is The Metamorphosis About? Kafka's Story of Gregor Samsa Explained

  The Metamorphosis is Franz Kafka's 1915 story about a salesman who wakes up as a giant insect. Here is the plot, what it means and why it still unsettles.

• Why Did Kafka Want His Work Burned? The Friend Who Said No, and the Books We Almost Lost

  Kafka asked Max Brod to burn his papers unread. Brod refused and published The Trial and The Castle. Why Kafka doubted his work, and why Brod said no.

• Why Raskolnikov Kills the Pawnbroker: Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Its Theory and Its Ending

  Raskolnikov kills an old pawnbroker to test his theory that extraordinary people may cross moral lines. What follows, the characters and the ending.