The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader

by Clarence Brown

Book Overview

Clarence Brown's marvelous collection introduces readers to the most resonant voices of twentieth-century Russia. It includes stories by Chekhov, Gorky, Bunin, Zamyatin, Babel, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, and Voinovich; excerpts from Andrei Bely's Petersburg , Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita , Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago , and Sasha Solokov's A School for Fools ; the complete text of Yuri Olesha's 1927 masterpiece Envy ; and poetry by Alexander...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142437573
• ISBN13: 9780142437575
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

How it was Done in Russia

I bought this book for a course in Russian short fiction, and two years later I still find myself coming back to it. There are many great examples of Soviet and pre-Soviet writing in this anthology, the complete text of Olesha's novella "Envy", as well as some excerpts from longer works like "The Master and Margarita" and "Dr. Zhivago". True to the Russian literary tradition, most of the pieces occupy a bizarre liminal space between incredibly funny and incredibly disturbing. The author I'm most grateful for having been introduced to through this volume is Danill Kharms, an absurdist writer from the early Soviet era. His "Anecdotes about Pushkin's Life" mocks the kind of hero worship prevelant in the literary world by presenting a series of ridiculous one-paragraph stories that make little to no sense, but are quite funny. Other highlights in this book include Zamayatin's (authour of "We") "The Cave", Babel's "My First Goose", Platonov's "The Potudan River", Zoshchenko's bureaucratic allegory "Bees and People", Gorky's "Recollections of Leo Tolstoy", and Shalamov's Gulag horror story "Lend Lease". This book is well worth getting, and you'll find yourself returning to it over and over again, each time finding something new.

Contents listing

The other review (by the reader from New Orleans) appears to refer to the 19th-century volume, not to this the 20th-century volume. Here's the contents list for THIS volume, copied-and-pasted from elsewhere..."Alyosha the Pot", Leo Tolstoy"The Bishop", Anton Chekhov"Recollections of Leo Tolstoy", Maxim Gorky"Light Breathing", Ivan Bunin"Time", Nadezhda Teffi"A Girl Was Singing" "The Stranger", Alexander Blokfrom "Petersburg", Andrei Bely"The Cave", Evgeni Zamyatin"Nikolai", Velimir Khlebnikov"Three Things in this World He Loved" "We're No Good at Saying Good-bye" "Dante" "When a Man Dies", "Courage", Anna Akhmatova"The Potudan River", Andrei Platonov"Varykino" "Hamlet" "March", Boris Pasternak"Theodosia" "The Admiralty" "The Thread of Gold Cordial Flowed" "Leningrad" "O Lord, Help Me to LiveThrough this Night" "The Last Supper", Osip Mandelstamfrom "The Master and Margarita", Mikhail Bulgakov"My First Goose" "How It was Done in Odessa" My First Fee", Isaac Babel"Bees and People" from "Before Sunrise", Mikhail Zoshchenko"Envy", Yuri Olesha"The Return of Chorb" "The Visit to the Museum", Vladimir Nabokov"A May Night" "Last Letter", Nadezhda Mandelstam"Anecdotes About Pushkin's Life" "The Connection", Daniil Kharms"Prosthetic Appliances" "A Child's Drawings" "Lend-Lease", Varlam Shalamov"Matryona's Home", Alexander Solzhenitsyn"Pkhentz", Andrei Sinyavsky"Adam and Eve", Yuri Kazakovfrom "Faithful Ruslan", Georgi Vladimov"A Circle of Friends", Vladimir Voinovichfrom "A School for Fools", Sasha Sokolov