Most of classic Russian books are dark, depressive and often engaging in political, social, religious, and ethical debates through their storytelling.

Perhaps, Owen Ashworth is trying to say, that the bottom of a Russian novel is not a joyful place.

Dostoevsky wrote about suicides, poverty, sufferings, exiles (The House of the Dead). One of Tolstoy’s best novels The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells about acceptance of the inevitability of death. His other famous book is about the war (and peace). Solzhenitsyn wrote about Gulag and how ethics and morality of people are falling in the conditions of a concentration camp.

But there are also exceptions: Gogol, Bulgakov, and Chekhov. Only three.