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Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is Russia's national poet. His great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal, was an African boy taken to Russia who became a favourite of Peter the Great and a general. Pushkin was educated at the imperial lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo and was exiled to the south of Russia for poems against tyranny.

His novel in verse Eugene Onegin, his drama Boris Godunov, his poem The Bronze Horseman and his short stories created modern Russian literature. He died at thirty-seven after a duel with a French officer who had pursued his wife. The library holds his works in Russian, English and Arabic.