St. Petersburg

My parents are in St. Petersburg now, and have sent back raving text messages, so perhaps I should go there sometime soon as well.

I have read Gogol's fabulous Petersburg tales, but not much else set in that city. Not even much Dostoyevsky, or Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg, so I guess I have lots to choose from.

Any other suggestions? A novel about the foundation of the city might be interesting too.

I found a non-fiction book set there - Letters from St Petersburg - fairly interesting.

Well, I did a tagmach and came up with:
St. Petersburg by Andrei Bely, a symbolist novel set during the early 20th century in revolutionary Russia.

Ken Follett has a novel The man from St. Petersburg, which I know nothing about, but came up in the Touchstone for Bely's book, so am including it here also.

Well, Ken Follett's The man from St. Petersburg, is not about St. Petersburg, but about an anarchist from Russia, now in London. See, how titles can fool you.

To the Hermitage by Malcolm Bradbury is set in St Petersburg with a modern story parallel with a historical story about Diderot and Catherine the Great. Not quite the foundation of the city, but soon after.

Robert K. Massie's biography of Peter the Great has a lot about the foundation of the city, and reads more like a novel than a history book.

I discovered Death of a Past Life thanks to the Early Reviewer Program. In it Robert Reincke describes his family's history in St Petersburg as it moved to Leningrad, Stalingrad and back to St Petersburg. A small glimpse into the city's history.

There is a number of interesting-looking novels set in Leningrad during the 900-day siege in WWII:

City of Thieves by David Benioff, a dark comedy
The Siege by Helen Dunmore
Ice Road by Gillian Slovo
Hunger by Elise Blackwell
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons, the first in a romantic trilogy, followed by Tatiana and Alexander and The Summer Garden

For a non-fiction look at this harrowing episode in the city's history:
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison E. Salisbury
The Siege of Leningrad 1941-1944: 900 Days of Terror by David M. Glantz
Blockade Diary by Lidiya Ginzburg

On my shelf I have a book set in St. Petersburg just before WWI:
Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett

Other novels set in St. Petersburg before the revolution:
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The White Russian by Tom Bradby

I just recently read The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak and thought it should be included on the list as well! It's a historical fiction novel set in the 18th century St. Petersburg. It mainly covers the imperial court of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and the rise of Catherine the Great, all told from a palace-maid-turned-spy point of view, but I found the tales about the city itself and its surroundings really lovely and fascinating.