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Tangentially, I'm interested to see your username OP, I just started reading "A hero of our time" this weekend. I've started to slowly get into Russian literatu

Tangentially, I'm interested to see your username OP, I just started reading "A hero of our time" this weekend. I've started to slowly get into Russian literature in th past six months, really based on books or authors mentioned in other books. I've read some Chekov, Turgenev, and now Lermontov, and would be curious to hear any recommendations. Really I like learning about what like was like then (at least from the authors' perspectives)

lb1lf 6y ago
You're off to a great start, but might I suggest you look into Tolstoi? The Sebastopol Sketches about Tolstoi's impressionf of the Crimean War, for instance? For a (much more refined!) literary work, I think my favourite is Hadji Murat - where Tolstoi contemplates loyalty and honour. And, of course, there's Anna Karenina and War and Peace, though I'll heretically admit that the latter didn't give me much except relief I'd churned myself through it by the time it was finished; I think I'd have appreciated it more if I'd kept notes underway - the dramatis personae is mind-bogglingly huge, and I suspect I lost lots of nuance as I lost track of the characters and their relationships. Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita' was a great read, but I'd suggest you get hold of a good commentary or annotated edition; when I first read it, I lost lots of context as I didn't catch references to contemporary Soviet society and persons (With several characters in the novel being modeled on real movers and shakers in the Soviet cultural scene) The story is brilliantly absurd and funny, though.
- ivankolev 6y ago
  I have to mention some Ilf and Petrov for a light-hearted read in between the heavy stuff.
russianlit 6y ago
You have a great list already. I will say of the ones most often recommended I’ve always dislike tostoy as it read to me like contemporary celebrity tabloid news: who wants to fuck who and how’d they kill themselves, and Nabokov because it always read to me like he was up his own ass (with the exception of pale fire because that character defect plays to his advantage in that work when read as a piece of satire) Recommendations include: Fiction: Gogol, Gorky Nonfiction: Solzhenitsyn Journals/essays: Mandelstam Poetry: Akhmatova, Pushkin, Pasternak
- mediaman 6y ago
  I'm not nearly as well read as you, but I've really enjoyed Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I enjoyed Tolstoy's constant arguing against the Great Man Theory, even if I disagree with aspects of his position. And I love Nabokov, both Lolita and Laughter in the Dark. I've just started reading Checkhov's short stories. They're almost comically dark. I like them.
  - russianlitreply 6y ago
    The internet is a deception. Of that list the only one I’ve read everything they’ve written is Akhmatova. Part of my brash delivery is because I’ve read a higher percentage of the total works of the two I deride than the ones I recommend. Mostly because I kept chasing the social dragon that they were ‘great works’. The difference being that I think back and consider insights of what I’ve read from the recommended author’s texts almost daily and only think of the derided authors when someone else inevitably praises them. If you like dark comedy you may like some of the works of Gogol from that list. He probably leans harder into the academic category of ‘magical realism’ when his grounded stories take a turn for the absurd but the absurdities can have a humor of their own.
opwieurposiu 6y ago
A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is a great book. It is also very short, you can read it in a couple hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_De...
Grustaf 6y ago
My favourites, apart from Dostoyevsky, are Gogol and Gorkiy. Reading Gogol inspired me to move to S:t Petersburg where I spent a few years. Chekov and Tolstoy are of course great, but to me they feel more Western. If someone told you Anna Karenina was written by an English author you might be inclined to believe them, but nobody would believe that about The Nose, Vyj or Crime and Punishment.
billfruit 6y ago
But I do feel the 20th century Russians aren't as popular as they should be, Serge, Gorssman, Babel, Nabokov and Solsenitzyn. Also Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" is a very "Russian" novel.

lb1lf 6y ago

You're off to a great start, but might I suggest you look into Tolstoi? The Sebastopol Sketches about Tolstoi's impressionf of the Crimean War, for instance? For a (much more refined!) literary work, I think my favourite is Hadji Murat - where Tolstoi contemplates loyalty and honour. And, of course, there's Anna Karenina and War and Peace, though I'll heretically admit that the latter didn't give me much except relief I'd churned myself through it by the time it was finished; I think I'd have appreciated it more if I'd kept notes underway - the dramatis personae is mind-bogglingly huge, and I suspect I lost lots of nuance as I lost track of the characters and their relationships. Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita' was a great read, but I'd suggest you get hold of a good commentary or annotated edition; when I first read it, I lost lots of context as I didn't catch references to contemporary Soviet society and persons (With several characters in the novel being modeled on real movers and shakers in the Soviet cultural scene) The story is brilliantly absurd and funny, though.

ivankolev 6y ago
I have to mention some Ilf and Petrov for a light-hearted read in between the heavy stuff.

russianlit 6y ago

You have a great list already. I will say of the ones most often recommended I’ve always dislike tostoy as it read to me like contemporary celebrity tabloid news: who wants to fuck who and how’d they kill themselves, and Nabokov because it always read to me like he was up his own ass (with the exception of pale fire because that character defect plays to his advantage in that work when read as a piece of satire) Recommendations include: Fiction: Gogol, Gorky Nonfiction: Solzhenitsyn Journals/essays: Mandelstam Poetry: Akhmatova, Pushkin, Pasternak

mediaman 6y ago
I'm not nearly as well read as you, but I've really enjoyed Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I enjoyed Tolstoy's constant arguing against the Great Man Theory, even if I disagree with aspects of his position. And I love Nabokov, both Lolita and Laughter in the Dark. I've just started reading Checkhov's short stories. They're almost comically dark. I like them.
- russianlitreply 6y ago
  The internet is a deception. Of that list the only one I’ve read everything they’ve written is Akhmatova. Part of my brash delivery is because I’ve read a higher percentage of the total works of the two I deride than the ones I recommend. Mostly because I kept chasing the social dragon that they were ‘great works’. The difference being that I think back and consider insights of what I’ve read from the recommended author’s texts almost daily and only think of the derided authors when someone else inevitably praises them. If you like dark comedy you may like some of the works of Gogol from that list. He probably leans harder into the academic category of ‘magical realism’ when his grounded stories take a turn for the absurd but the absurdities can have a humor of their own.

opwieurposiu 6y ago

A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is a great book. It is also very short, you can read it in a couple hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_De...

Grustaf 6y ago

My favourites, apart from Dostoyevsky, are Gogol and Gorkiy. Reading Gogol inspired me to move to S:t Petersburg where I spent a few years. Chekov and Tolstoy are of course great, but to me they feel more Western. If someone told you Anna Karenina was written by an English author you might be inclined to believe them, but nobody would believe that about The Nose, Vyj or Crime and Punishment.

billfruit 6y ago

But I do feel the 20th century Russians aren't as popular as they should be, Serge, Gorssman, Babel, Nabokov and Solsenitzyn. Also Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" is a very "Russian" novel.