The latest addition to my website is Vasily Golovanov‘s Остров или Оправдание бессмысленных путешествий [Island or A Justification for Meaningless Travel]. This is a wonderful non-fiction novel, in which the author describes his fascination with and his visits to Kolguyev Island, a remote island off the coast of Northern Russia. Professionally he has worked as … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Взятие Измаила [The Taking of Izmail]. This is one of his earlier novels, not (yet?) translated into English but, in my view more enjoyable than his two novels that have been translated into English. The blurb on the back of the French edition (which I read) … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Письмовник (The Light and the Dark). It tells the story of two lovers, Volodya and Sasha, apparently writing letters to one another though, as we eventually learn, they appear to be living a hundred years apart. He is a soldier, appointed to be staff clerk, in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Mikhail Shishkin‘s Венерин Волос (Maidenhair). This is a very complex novel that romps through Russian history, primarily of the past hundred years but also dips into earlier history, including Xenophon. An unnamed Russian-German interpreter is the link between the various stories. He works for the Swiss authority dealing … Read more
Last year, starting in March, I read nothing but Icelandic novels for a month or so. I found the experience very interesting, getting different perspectives of the same country in a short space of time, so I decided to repeat the exercise with another country. I did think about New Zealand, as I have recently … Read more
If you do not live the United States or did not get a chance to watch PBS’ Russia’s Open Book, I strongly urge you to do so if you have any interest in the contemporary novel. This film, funnily enough introduced by the very English (and bearded) Stephen Fry and narrated by the very English … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sasha Sokolov‘s Школа для дураков (A School for Fools). Sokolov did not even try to publish this novel in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s and it was first published in Russian in the United States. It is easy to see why the Soviet Union would not allow … Read more
If you ask most people who was the greatest criminal of the twentieth century, nine times out of ten Adolf Hitler would top the list and with very good reason. Scott Manning argues that the Nazis were responsible for around 21 million deaths. I have no reason to dispute his figures. As for Stalin, it … Read more
If I had to choose the countries that produced the best novels in the 19th century, the top three countries would undoubtedly be England, Russia and France in that order. Austen, Borrow, the Brontë sisters, Butler, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Thackeray and Trollope, to name only the best, produced some of the finest novels ever written, … Read more
The latest review on my website is of Sarah Quigley‘s The Conductor, set in Leningrad during the siege of that city by the Germans. Though I did not mention it in my review there was one minor annoyance with the book. The characters used plays on words in English which would not work in Russian. … Read more