Top 10 novels set in Moscow

A linguist and an international negotiator, Ann Shevchenko speaks seven languages and is the author of two books on cross-cultural communication.

Her debut novel is Bequest.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten novels set in Moscow. One novel on the list:

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (Moscow in 1981)

For me, as an insider of the Soviet system, Martin Cruz Smith's crime novel was one of the best western descriptions of the Moscow map as a grid of Soviet ideology at the beginning of the 1980s.

The background of the story of Soviet investigator Arkady Renko is the hypocrisy and corruption of the system, with the mutilated bodies in a Moscow amusement park as the main attractions.

Read about a classic novel on Shevchenko's list.

--Marshal Zeringue