Thread: Reading project--- would appreciate advice!

Hi,
You should try Bulgakov. He's one of the best Russian writers. Indeed. But he's unappreciated by the westerners.

Originally Posted by Paul G.

Hi,
You should try Bulgakov. He's one of the best Russian writers. Indeed.

Absolutely!

I might recommend starting with Роковые яйца ("The Fateful Eggs"), even though it's not Bulgakov's most famous work. But since it's a novella rather than a full-length novel, as a non-native reader you don't have to keep track of a large cast of secondary characters or multiple subplots.

In summary, it's an early anti-Soviet satire (from 1924) in the form of a science-fiction tale partly inspired by H.G. Wells' Food of the Gods, in which scientists attempt to solve food shortages by growing farm animals to enormous sizes, but the giant creatures escape and cause havoc. As in some of Bulgakov's other works, the humor is mixed with just a bit of Stephen King-ish graphic violence -- giant snakes biting people in half, blood spurting in fountains, etc. -- which, for my money, makes for much more entertaining reading than the problems of aristocrats trapped in boring marriages.

Also, both the original text and a good English translation (for "reading in parallel") are available free at the lib.ru site.

Another personal recommendation: Although Lewis Carroll's two "Alice" books obviously aren't "native Russian literature," they were translated with great faithfulness and skill by Nina M. Demurova in the 1960s. (Ms. Demurova was inspired to undertake a completely new translation of the books after reading Martin Gardner's classic The Annotated Alice, and her edition translates many of Gardner's explanatory notes in addition to Carroll's complete texts.) If you're a fan of Lewis Carroll, the Demurova translations are wonderful for "parallel reading," and they're free at the lib.ru site. (Of course, the original English texts are public domain and can be found all over the place.)