It’s f***ed up to say, but it’s kind of a shame that Polanski’s adaptation never happened, apparently the script for it was amazing.

You translated the book from Russian to English?

nah lol I looked into how they translated characters names for the Spanish version and a***yzed it

That sounds interesting af, care to give a quick summary?

uh f*** I dont remember anything ill give it a read and let u know. iirc they did a good job overall

Lmao long story short: they did a good job

I'm reading Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge and it's pretty good, but I seem to have this issue with a lot of final or posthumous novels where the author will just have characters straight up deliver the author's beliefs as dialogue. Like the author is saying "fuck this, I've been trying long enough and you readers still haven't gotten it" so they just drop all pretense of an actual dialogue. Anyone else ever seen this?

Other than that though the book is fantastic, the first of four parts is a spy-thriller kind of thing, and the second (which I'm on) is about the siege of Leningrad. Beautiful writing and conveys mood well

Started reading Dead Souls by Gogol(Гоголь)

First 2 chapters were good

Loved Gogols short story The Overcoat, such a classic

Favorite Russian writer?

How would y'all rate The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov?

New edition will be released in Dutch in October and will definitely pick it up to read.

Already read A Dog's Heart by Bulgakov but didn't really like that one. Prose felt really weird, but that could also be the translation

m&m is cool I did a thesis on one of its translations back in uni

I read it when I was younger and simply put it reads like a basis for a really fun movie or play

Dovlatov is cool. and its a basic pick but Pushkin really is goated for how he did the whole language up, its a joy reading his stuff no matter how old you are

I’m almost finished with part 1 of Dead Souls. Saw that part 2 is around 160pages and was released after Gogol’s death. But in this edition it’s included.

I’m confused now because I thought Gogol burned the manuscript for part 2

Do you know Russian?

Yeah first read I probably shouldn’t worry to much about getting everything out of the book because I read that it’s such a dense book full of symbolism. Really curious about it tho.

Did you read a dog’s heart btw?

I am from russia so yeah. I both watched and read a dog's heart. it was fun when you didnt consider all the class implications and how Bulgakov basically equates poor people to dogs and whatnot. lots of quotables though!

How do you compare the style /prose from A dog’s heart to Master and Margarita?

I really didn’t like the style/prose in a dogs heart

oh man I read it so long ago I honestly dont remember. m&m wasn't that hard to read I feel like, and most people dont care for a dogs heart the book so much so as the movie, in part because the book is not that amazing

you should try The Twelve Chairs for something light, that one is fun too

a lot of those soviet books and authors are fairly dry in writing. my lit teacher would say that its to counteract the flowery prose of romantic authors from previous centuries, what with the whole ship of modernity* and that. but ive not done any good reading on those in forever

*more here and yes it reads like total nonsense: marxists.org/subject/art/literature/mayakovsky/1917/slap-in-face-public-taste.htm

Might watch the movie tonight if I can find it with English or Dutch subtitles

Just finished Dead Souls by Gogol.

It was an enjoyable reading experience but not really impressed with it tbh. Gave it 3 starts and that felt weird for such a classic.

Part 2 and the last chapter felt a bit underwhelming and the fact that some sentences and chapters weren't finished was annoying sometimes.

Shout out to Pushkin

Niggas always been up