The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories

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The Penguin Book of Russian Short Stories

I guess I've been in a Russian mood lately, since I read this and K Blows Top at the same time.  I've had this book for years and never gotten to it, so thank you TBR challenge! 

This is a collection of 20 short stories by Russia's most famous authors from Pushkin to Solzhenitsyn.  I finally read Gogol's Nose!  (It is weird and surreal.)  I loved Turgenev's Bezhin Lea and Garshin's The Scarlet Flower.  I did not really care for the Nabokov story even though I usually like Nabokov.  And I very much liked Nagibin's Winter Oak.

I took my time with this book and read it a little slowly so I could enjoy every story.  On the whole it was a lovely collection.  This particular collection is no longer in print and Penguin has replaced it with one that's about twice as large.  It's probably good too.  I couldn't find an image of my edition at all, but it has this portrait of Pushkin on the cover, though this is a detail image.

Comments

  1. ChinoiseriesSeptember 17, 2012 at 12:45 PM

    Wasn't someone going to host a Russian classical reading event soon? :) I'm not sure whether I can ever read a Gogol story again. The Overcoat was pretty depressing. But perhaps, Russian lit in small doses...?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanSeptember 17, 2012 at 3:20 PM

    Hm, a Russian short story per month? A novel every 6 months? As enchanted as I am by Russian literature, I have to take it in fairly small doses...

    ReplyDelete

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