A Country Doctor's Notebook3 reviews Mikhail Bulgakov Harvill Pr, 1995 Bulgakov the genius does it again + Powerful, Human and Real + Emotional and moving This is Bulgakov's own personal journey as a doctor recently graduated and sent to the countryside to practice. This is something that is still common in a number of developing countries and is used both to even up the social balance of city and country and also to provide medical care to those ...             Forever Flowing7 reviews Vasily Grossman Harper & Row, 1972 Moving, Thoughtful & Important + Important statement about the Russian soul + Alexander Shuster + Moving Account of horrors of Bolshevism and Leninism             Overcoat and Other Tales of Good and Evil6 reviews Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol W. W. Norton & Company, 1965 Department Head... + Brilliant, Unique Prose + I did not read this particular edition + Underrated and brilliant             The Cossacks (Modern Library Classics)6 reviews Leo Tolstoy Modern Library, 2006 "As one needs nothing oneself, why not live for others?": Olenin's epiphany + A real find + Excellent Short Fiction From Tolstoy + An outstanding tale of aristocrats and peasants.             Fathers and Sons2 reviews Ivan Turgenev Signet Classics, 2005 Turgenev's classic + Fathers and Sons revisited many years later I think the thing I enjoyed most about "Fathers and Sons" was that it was short. The great Russian classics we generally think of are "War and Peace", "Crime and Punishment", etc. These are all long, drawn out books. "Fathers and Sons", thankfully, is short(er), with fewer characters and less ...             Dust and Ashes (Arbat Trilogy, Vol 3)5 reviews Anatoli Naumovich Rybakov Little Brown & Co (T), 1996 Gripping story + The Russian Romeo and Juliet + Evocative and powerful Each of the books in the trilogy, made me feel a part of the very lives A.R. was writing about. So powerful of a writer, i wished I could read Russion and read the text in the original form.             House of Meetings27 reviews Martin Amis Knopf, 2007 Amazing Tale of the True Russia + Surprising In this beautifully written and mesmerizing book Amis creates the autobiography of a Russian man, a Jew, who has had the enormous misfortune to be born in the late 1920s: old enough to have endured Stalin's purges, old enough to have served as a soldier in WWII (with enough harrowing memories to ...             Resurrection (The World's Classics)8 reviews Leo Tolstoy Oxford University Press, USA, 1994 Profound! + Tolstoy's best. + A Great Work by a Mature Master + One of Tolstoy's best, but not the best.             Platonov: The River Potudan (Russian Texts) Duckworth Publishers, 2001 This is a title in the Bristol Classical Press Russian Texts series, in Russian with English notes, vocabulary and introduction. The influence of Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), a gifted writer of the Soviet era, has pervaded Soviet and Russian literature since the 1950s. "The River Potudan" (1937), should introduce the student of Russian to the complex thought and ideas that writers like Platonov, ...             The First Circle (European Classics)21 reviews Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Northwestern University Press, 1997 beyond thought provoking + Harper & Row's de facto censorship + Much to identify with + AN ALMOST GREAT BOOK             A Hero of Our Time (Penguin Classics)47 reviews Mikhail Lermontov Penguin Classics, 2001 "I was prepared to love the whole world . . . I learned to hate." + The influence of the superfluous man proves ultimately vast. + Groundbreaking for its time + Excellent portrayal of the classical Russian soul             The Oak and the Calf2 reviews Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn Harpercollins, 1980 I LIKE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, BUT I LOVE THIS BOOK THE BEST + The Oak and the Calf Don't get me wrong, Gulag Archipelago is one of my favorite all-time works. It's place in world history is secure. But the Oak and the Calf is a personal history of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (arguably the greatest living writer in the world). At a time when the punishment for owning a copy of Gulag ...             A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-194530 reviews Vasily Grossman Vintage, 2007 Stalingrad, Kursk, Treblinka and More + Great book + The Real War + Historic document             Anna Karenina (Barnes & Noble Classics)6 reviews Leo Tolstoy Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004 Sense of Self + The Essential Russian Romance Novel + Beautiful language at points, needed editing. + Looks Good + A Classic in a Great Package             Dead Souls: A Novel33 reviews Nikolai Gogol Vintage, 1997 Dead Souls: Translation is Everything + An Incredibly Funny Social Satire + definitely worth a read! + A Charming Russian Masterpiece + Russian satire at its best.             The Fate of a Man Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov Fredonia Books (NL), 2003 There is restraint and a trace of sadness in the way Mikhail Sholokov begins his story, as if to warn the reader that it is not an easy tale he has to tell. One postwar spring the author met a tall man with stooping shoulders and big rugged hands. And perhaps for the first and last time soldier Andrei Sokolov told a chance acquaintance the story of his life, told how he endured tortures and ...             Surviving Freedom: After the Gulag1 review Janusz Bardach, Kathleen Gleeson University of California Press, 2003 Interesting but not as insightful as the author's first book Skip this book and just read "Kolyma Tales" or "Man is Wolf to Man." The author is genuine and sincere but rambles on endlessly about information that is quite boring and not pertaining to his life in the Gulag. It was difficult to follow his ideas after chapter 2.             Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag31 reviews Janusz Bardach, Kathleen Gleeson University of California Press, 1999 An unbelievably bleak tale of survival in the Gulag + Gripping + Stunning + Surviving against all odds + must read for those interested in the holocaust             Days and Nights1 review Konstantine Simonov Simon and Schuster, 1945 Life and Death in Stalingrad At times heart wrenching, intense, and personal, Days and Nights revolves around Captain Alexei Ivanovich Saburov as he commands his battalion in the battle for Stalingrad. The novel is written strictly from the Russian point of view. It's obviously written to represent a patriotic view of the war ...             THE DON FLOWS HOME TO THE SEA Mikhail (translated by Stephen Garry) Sholokhov Signet, 1960 This rousing novel follows the brave, lusty, reckless Cossacks through four years of catastrophic upheavel-from bloody revolution to bitter civil strife.