Please recommend some good books - preferably something along the lines of Anna Karenina..but I'm open to anything as long as it's interesting.

Thanks!

i've only read Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, but that is genius.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is my absolute favourite one! Its very different form Anna Karenina though, mixing philosophy with phantasmagoria and sarcasm.


Another one of my favourite authors is Ivan Bunin. He mostly wrote short stories, rather than novels, but it is very very Russian in spirit. He's got the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Other popular choices would be Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Probably more in line with Anna Karenina. Pasternak was also awarded the Nobel prize, but was forced to refuse it by the Soviet government.

agree. solzhenhitsyn's one day in the life of ivan denisovitch is quick to read. the willets translation is meant to be the best

i have loads of tolstoy and dostoyevsky and solzhenhitsyn at my house that i haven't gotten to read yet. maybe i'll hit some up on the plane. dunno.

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you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking

Yes, Solzhenitsyn is great! I totally forgot to mention him! I was just re-reading One day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch recently.

anyone read the flute player by d m thomas? it's set in a fantastic version of st petersburg and is loosely based around the lives of some real writers, artists, etc.

yes, i second that

First Love by Ivan Turgenev is the only russian book I've actually enjoyed.

I'm always blown away by the insight in Notes from Underground by dostoyevsky it just goes on and on and I've never got past the first 20 pages.

We by Zamatin is on my Must Read list though as it's apparently the first ever 1984, brave new world type book and I like both of those.

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Would you like a cigarette? They're quite exellent.

My grandma's best friend was Turgenev's grand grand daughter (or something like that). She used to tell a lot of stories how they went to the village where Turgenev lived and apparently Turgenev's brother was some evil master and after the revolution peasants destroyed his tomb and threw the remains out of the church, were they were buried. Since then there was a legend that his ghost wanders around.

So when they were in that village, living in Turgenev's house strange things happened to them. Once when they walked outside at night somebody pushed my grandma's friend on the back, so that she nearly fell down, but when she turned, there was nobody there. Another time, somebody turned all the things in the kitchen upside-down during the night.

I used to be fascinated with this stories as a kid! I thought I'd share

I haven't read "And quietly flows the Don", by... someone, but I had a flatmate who raved about it, and I generally respected his advice on literary matters.

I second this.

does nabokov count? invitation to a beheading is the only one written in russian that i've read (in translation), but i loved bend sinister of his the best, although it was written in english

He is still Russian and he translated his work into Russian himself.

NO

philistine. russia's greatest 20th cent writer

i also recommend the master and margarita

The Double- Dostoïevski

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Who needs love when there's Southern Comfort?

if you like poetry.these russian poets are fantastic:

anna ahmatova
sergey yessenin
joseph brodsky

What about Dostoyevsky's The Idiot..? I have a copy of that and I've been meaning to read it for months