By all means do! I'm looking for new material.
By all means do! I'm looking for new material.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
It depends on your taste, some people like Tolstoy, some Dostoevsky.
I would recommend short stories by Gogol, whatever you find like The Fair at Sorochintsï (short story)
St. John's Eve (short story)
May Night or the Drowned Maiden
Christmas Eve
The Old World Landowners too many to list...
Kuprin - if you like romantic stories
Short stories by Leo Tolstoy,
You know what if you can find any of prose of Lermontov and Pushkin you will enjoy it.
I would continue, but for the beginning it will be enough
"Where love is there God is also".
Leo Tolstoy
I think the following recommendations aren't representative of the Russian cannon but definitely good for transitioning in:
1) Notes From the Underground - Dostoevsky
2) We - Zamyatin
Interesting reference: Orwell famously admitted to "We" being a big influence on "1984".
Russian literature is a great depository of literary genres and I have read them substantially and of course you can start with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov, to name a few and once you do read them you will find them unputdownable
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Check these pages: (The only problem, as I said, is that they're completely in Russian)Originally Posted by kiki1982
http://www.lib.ru/NOSOW/
That's for Nikolay Nosov's famous story about Neznayka and his friends (they live in an imaginary land of small people and get involved in different adventures, but mind you it's rather propagandist);
http://www.lib.ru/TALES/SIBIYAK/
Mamin-Sibiryak, his stories are more similar to the folktales;
http://hyaenidae.narod.ru/
This page is for Russian fairy tales;
And generally loads of books here: http://flibusta.net/g/child_tale/Author
Though, to tell you the truth, when I was small I preferred Astrid Lindgren and Alan Milne to our Russian children's writers
The first I read was Eugene Onegin by Pushkin. And it got me hooked on Russian Lit. I think that Fathers and Children by Turgenev is a good start too. But if you start with Eugene Onegin, you have to read the James Falen translation. It is FAR superior to all others, keeping the ideas of the writing, and the rhythms and rhymes of the Onegin stanza. Yes, it's so consistent, it's named the Onegin stanza, it's as defined as the Shakespearean Sonnet...actually more defined because of feminine/masculine rhyming. ANYWAYS! I'd say Eugene Onegin or Fathers and Children
I would like to call your attention to works of Vasily Shukshin - Russian actor, writer and film director. His short stories let you get closer to simple Russian people.
"Where love is there God is also".
Leo Tolstoy
Just read Turgenev's First Love so I'll second that recommendation. Short but sweet.
"Master and Margarita", if you like dark mysticism, sarcasm and fantasy all mixed up.
Last edited by Maryana; 04-08-2010 at 09:27 PM.
The answer depends on what kind of literature you prefer. Yet several names who are not commony known to public outside Russia have occurred to my mind
1. Vasily Shukshin, e.g. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...berian_Village
2. Konstantin Paustovsky, an amazing writer, once competeing with Mikhail Sholokhov for Nobel Prize
3. Sergei Dovlatov, a cult figure in the Russian literature, a must read even for readers who read Tolstoy only in school
4. Ilf and Petrov "Twelve Chairs" and "Golden Calf", the same as Dovlatov. May be the two funniest books in the Russian literature. Nabokov considered them as work by geniuses.
5. Andrey Bitov, e.g. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...f_the_Causasus
6. Nikolay Leskov, a great writer, contemporary to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, but unfortunately completely overshadowed by these two giant figures. Unfortunately his highest artestry in working with style and language is extremely hard to translate.
7. Leond Leonov, a great Soviet writer, but I am not sure his best works were translated.
8. Ivan Bunin, a great Russian writer, may be the greatest master in "drawing" with words in the Russian literature. Excelent psychological and very "tangible" proze. Nobel Prize winner.
9. Andrei Platonov, for me one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, but the same as with Leskov, his very individual and queer language is hardly translatable.
10. Alexander Kuprin, a very talented writer once very popular in Russia and SU, contemporary to Chekhov and Bunin. e.g. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...arnet_Bracelet
11. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, novelist and playwright, one of the best modern Russian writers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Petrushevskaya
Last edited by Eric Vornoff; 06-20-2010 at 03:01 AM.
Recently finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and enjoyed it very much. It's an easy read and a great look into a part of Russian history.
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